And so it is a cold, but promising, March day. Nothing better than to put on some good music , go barefooted around the kitchen and cook for the week.

Since this is to be a blog site related to Mindfulness and to Yoga and Ayurveda, well be Mindfully aware of how wonderful it is to splurge on red beautiful tomatoes in March. Not such a good example of ayurveda because these tomatoes had a long ride to my kitchen. Note that all this cheese is a lot to handle for a Kapha who is going out of balance in this cold moist weather right now .  Great for Vata; very grounding and warm and moist. Good for Pitta, also, rather neutral for them. Pittas probably want to add some hot spices to warm it up that way; use good judgement by checking your vkruti before you splurge on fire.  Nonetheless, here’s a record of how to do it.

I baked a pie crust and, in this case, I wanted to carefully count the calories. So I bought a premade refrigerated crust. The idea is to use the crust as a liner and not really eat it. I could look up the calories in the entire pie. 880. Well so much for eating any of that in a day.

Then I whisked together 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese grated, 1 cup of ricotta cheese ( made from yummy whole milk in this situation), some wonderful pink sea salt, some basil leaves dried from last summer, and 2 lovely Central Market eggs. Ground some pepper into the mix. This entire mix went into the bottom of the pre-baked pie crust. On top of that you see the layered tomatoes. Sprinkled some thyme, savory, and the like from my herbs and drizzled 4 tablespoons of olive oil that Betsy brought to me from Boothbay Harbour last summer.  Into the 450 degree oven for 35 minutes.

If you promise NOT to eat the crust.  the entire filling of this pie adds up to a 1200 calories, rounded out for the math.   So a piece that is cut from 1/4 of this pie ( a generous slice) is worth 300 calories + 220 calories if you decide to eat the crust

That’s my pie day today.