And yet a (savory) tomato pie is a wonderful thing! But not as a substitute for apple pie...no.

My mother was an excellent cook. Unfortunately, over the course of the years, she felt the need to start lightening things up because "everyone's dieting." So meals had all fats, sugars, etc removed. Now while some things were really good there were some that were pretty much inedible. Like "pizza minestra" which is greens sautéed in oil & garlic, served over polenta. Except that these greens were boiled, served over a "polenta' made as dry as sand with nothing but plain water.

Also, aside from fresh basil (thrown whole into the sauce...leaves, stem, flowers) or dried oregano there was NO seasoning used. Except for vegetable bouillon cubes. Because salt was bad. I tried explaining to my mother that the bouillon had more sodium than salt but it didn't matter.

One of her most memorable creations was "diet" cream puffs. Basically homemade choux pastry shells filled with plain, unflavored yogurt and whole grapes. You didn't need to sweeten the filling with anything because "the fruit was sweet enough." It was indescribable, like the house of horrors "eyeballs in slime." You would bite into them expecting a cream puff but end up experiencing some sort of horrible, cruel, sour trick with the occasional squishy lump thrown in.

Of course once I was cooking for myself and learned that you could use things like butter and oil when you cooked I gained about an entire additional person in weight so maybe there was something to her "diet" cooking? (especially if you couldn't manage to eat it.)