70°f/21°C, mostly sunny, quite humid. Reached 88° today.
Kitchen windowsill
I thought I was going to make grape juice today, but our son Derek called and said he was coming over with his daughter Hannah and four of her six children. So I scurried about making scones and moving anything fragile out of harm's way before they arrived.
We had a wonderful visit. Derek helped Larry work on the mower (progress, but slow) while Hannah and I chatted, and I got to hold new baby Sutton for ever so long. Heaven! Is there anything that smells as sweet as a little baby? He's a bit colic-y and upchucked on me a time or two, but who cares with such sweetness on their lap?
The other three, ages 5, 7, and 10, played, and played hard. They hunted for treasure in the yard ---after living here for 50 years, there are all kinds of little odd things to be found, like a tiny pulley, a prism, a Guinness bottle cap with the harp on it, the missing end of my curtain rod, sea shells and more. They colored, raided the toy box for cars and trucks and generally kept themselves busy. They ate all the scones too!
One thing they did not do was ask to watch TV. I wonder if this is a sign of the times? Most children have laptops and even their own phones these days, so do they still watch as much television as they used to? I think not.
I didn't take any photos, as I was quite happy just holding the baby, talking with Hannah and watching the children play. It was so nice to hear excited little voices here again. Although Hannah doesn't live too far away, packing up her crew is a job, and the baby is just one month old.
After they left, I tidied up a bit, although these kids did a great job actually of doing that themselves. Then I made tomato pie.
I had seen recipes for this last week along with a few videos, and it sounded easy enough. Funny though, the videos don't show going out to the garden to get the tomatoes, onions, and basil! That added a little time not included in their blithely estimate of prep time. Seriously though, this was easy to make. I basically used Paula Deen's recipe, but there are plenty of others out there.
Basically, you pre-bake the pie shell for 10 minutes at 350°. Paula Deen did not say to do that, but others recommended it as a way to keep the crust from becoming soggy. She also said to blanche the tomatoes, but no other recipe did that so I skipped that step. I did slice the tomatoes and laid the slices on paper towels to soak up some of the liquid, and also patted them as dry as possible with paper towels. I used a mixture of yellow, red, black and pink tomatoes, just for fun.
Next, chop up the green onions, about 1/2 cup and I tore the basil leaves into smaller pieces. Then mix the onions up with 1 cup mayonnaise, 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, 1 cup mozzarella cheese, some salt and pepper to taste. I put a layer of tomato slices into the piecrust, then a layer of onions, then the basil. I did a second layer of tomatoes, then spread the cheese-mayo mixture over the top and baked at 350° for 30 minutes.
It was delicious! Runnier than I had hoped for and tricky to get out of the pan, both things mentioned in many of the recipes. But oh my, what goodness.
I wish I had remembered to take a photo before cutting it, because it was so pretty. If you make tomato pie, do you have a trick to curb the runniness?
The grapes are still on hold. I guess that will be tomorrow's project!
