tomato pie.

This past summer, on a six-week-long backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, I had extremely limited time on the internet. Instead of spending my precious hours in crowded internet cafes updating Facebook or sending long emails to friends and relatives, I wandered the streets, beaches and temples, met people, drank too many buckets and discovered new restaurants and treats. Near the end of the six weeks, though, I was craving comfort food from home. Hard. (Despite their best efforts, a burger and fries doesn't quite taste the same over there - at least in the cheap spots I was eating, where local food is what's good on the menu.)

At one hostel in Vietnam near the very end of our stay, we were elated to discover we got free wifi on our phones. I spent hours that night combing food blogs. Torture in its truest form. At some delirious point, probably around 3 a.m, I specifically remember coming across a link to this recipe on one of my favourite blogs, Vanilla Sugar Blog, and thinking: the things I would do for a slice of that pie right now. (Keep in mind this was after weeks of shlepping around a backpack so bulging I gained the nickname "the turtle," sleeping in bus stations and learning to ignore the strange and unsettlingly large bugs that would pop up in our rooms/huts at night... I just wanted some cheesy, bacon-y tomato pie.) 

And so finally, months later, I made it. And it was every bit as good as the pie I'd dreamed of that night in Vietnam. Sinfully rich, strikingly flavourful and even better eaten cold the next day. Yup. Might liken this to a slice of heaven - with cheese, bacon, mayo, fresh tomatoes and a flaky crust, how could it not be? Sadly for my arteries, we had tons of leftovers (a small slice of this is super-filling, which helped justify my knowing what went into it!) so I had to eat it for lunch every day last week. Life is tough.

Thanks to Vanilla Sugar Blog for the recipe and the pie that was my light at the end of the tunnel on that long, sleepless night. Food blogs - what would we do without them?