BLT - bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. This sounds simple enough, but a dissection of the ingredients and all the variables and permutations numbers in the thousand.Let’s start with the bacon: slab, hickory smoked, apple smoked, thick cut, thin cut, Canadian style and even that recent interloper, turkey bacon. We next move to the second listed ingredient, lettuce: standard iceberg, Bibb, romaine, arugula, even radical Radichio for the adventurous among you. Next to the Tomato: our favourites are the varieties Champion and Celebrity; but there are also Beefsteak, Heritage, even Roma and the sprinkling of cherry or grape tomatoes. These are just the red ones. If you get to the golden or pink varieties you could lose yourself and never find you way out.
How about the the unsung parts of the meal - the bread holding it all together? There is whole wheat, dark rye, light rye, white sandwich, Italian Pane, even brioche buns and a piece or two of sliced baguette. To Toast or not to Toast may be a fundamental question.
On to the “ointment” one wishes to employ. Deb is a butter only girl and more than happy to leave the lettuce portion off; Mark is a mayonnaise man with lettuce included, or perhaps the world famous Durkee’s sauce for a bit of spice. There are those that prefer a light Russian Dressing, or perhaps a french salad dressing as the condiment of choice. Two things for us are clear:, the price of bacon escalates as the tomato crop comes in, and it takes a pound of bacon to make a meal, also at least two medium sized slicing tomatoes.
The other new try for us is a fresh Greek style salad, with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese (Greek, not the crumbles) red onion, green peppers, capers, kalamata olives, with an oil and vinegar dressing. Grill a small chicken breast or a small steak on the grill, thin slice it and top the salad and you have a main dish using more tomatoes.There will be lots of pasta sauce frozen for the winter to add to pasta or chili con carne; and we are going to try our hand at stewing and canning this year. Great times in the kitchen and something to dip our homemade bread in. Of course we keep saying only one plant of full sized tomatoes and one of grape sized next year - let’s hope we don’t forget by spring of 2021.
In other news this week, we enjoyed another Friday Cocktail Zoom with our friendsTom & Kevin in Tucson who are “basking” in the 100ºF and over heat; also another great evening patio dinner with our friends Lee and Howie at their home, Howie made killer ground sirloin burgers on the grill and Lee furnished her trademark strawberry, red onion and romaine salad with sweet poppy seed dressing. The description does not do it justice as the salad is delicious.
Mark received last year four cherry wood logs from Glenda and Jeff’s Lincoln yard. Jeff was practicing with his new chainsaw! The logs have been acclimating in Mark’s basement shop for most of a year so; on Thursday, he loaded them into the trusty Subaru and hauled them to the sawmill. The resulting beautiful boards will find there way into some furniture over the winter. The boards are stunning - hope only that he doesn’t butcher them too badly.
We have been watching the Democratic Convention in the evenings this week. The level of speech making is truly heartening. The highlight for us was in watching the Obamas - Michelle’s speech was uplifting, and Barack’s takedown of “He who shall not be named” was enough to make s stand up and cheer. Such thoughtful, truthful, and empathetic people have been missed the last 3 1/2 years. To be fair, Mark will watch the Republican offering next week (if he doesn’t go apoplectic) to see how they respond. Got to be fair minded, even if the opposition isn’t.
Mask up, wash your hands and stay safe. We are not down yet!
