The Pantry Pie

My kitchen had a much needed rest for the weekend, but it was back to work full force today. Without the much treasured cookbook "Master the Art of French Cooking", I got inspiration today from my favorite design magazine "Country Living". There was a recipe that grabbed the attention of my taste buds, and also got my mind searching for a way to make this certain recipe my own with ingredients I would already have in my pantry. So for lunch we set down to what I call a "Pantry Pie". Here it is....

Prepared pie crust thawed and baked
4 large tomatoes
1 medium onion finely diced
1 cup lite mayonaise
1/2 cup freshly grated parmasean cheese
6 slices of deli sliced Harvarti cheese
1 tsp lemon juice
basil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slice, thinly 1 tomato for garnish and set aside. In a mixing bowl mix mayonaise, parmasean cheese, and lemon juice together. Chop up rest of tomatoes into wedges. Line the bottom of the baked pie crust with half of the tomatoes and half of the diced onion. Sprinkle salt and pepper and basil on the top. Spread half of the mayonaise mixture on top of that layer, then three slices of the Harvarti cheese. Repeat layers again starting with tomatoes, onion, salt and pepper and basil, mayonaise mixture, and three slices of Harvarti cheese. Top the pie with the tomatoes for garnish and more basil.
This pie was delicious and fed our family for lunch and dinner. It costs next to nothing, was extremly filling and was great with a side salad. The neat thing about this pie is (hence the name) you use whatever you happen to have in your pantry. As long as you make layers and have some sort of cheese and mayonaise mixture you can put whatever you want in the pie. Any vegetable or even meat would be great in it, and if you don't have a frozen pie crust you can make your own; most everyone has those ingredients on hand. Try it out, it's also a great way to use up leftovers!