BLT's are my perfect food.
The BLT is not my favorite sandwich, but it should be. Here's why . . .
To begin with, BLT's taste good.
Secondly, the combination of flavors on a BLT is perfect. I made BLT's a week ago. We had bacon that was a little too close to old to be eating, lettuce that was mostly on the rusty side, mealy and hothouse grown tomatoes and bread that needed to be toasted in order to kill off the sogginess that was breeding mold. Any of the ingredients standing alone should have been thrown in the trash. I told akid that it was unlikely that they were going to be edible. AND YET, they were divine. The BLT transforms the most mediocre ingredients into a delightful food.
Thirdly, bacon is a good source of some vitamin (B6, I think) that increases your happy hormones. That means bacon makes you happy--the significance of this should not be lost on Brian, who loves bacon and who is generally the happiest person you know. Or at least the most stable person you know anyway.
Fourthly, BLT's remind me of good friends. The best BLT's I ever had were made in the kitchen of my good friends Leann and Julie. We spent (too much) time discussing optimum cooking
methods for bacon and slicing methods for tomatoes, drinking bloody marys and savoring our lives and our shared company. They had a great kitchen which always generated the best food. (they also added avocados to their BLT's, which is a very smart thing to do).Finally, BLT's are a comfort food. I know my mom made some mean BLT's in her day. I don't remember them, but I know that she laid the foundation of the love affair I now have with BLT's.
Thanks Mom.
22 comments:
The best BLTs in Chicago are to be had at Angel's on Clark St., although I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by the one I ordered when we went there a couple of weeks ago. Inspired by this blog entry, I have offered to make Mari a BLT on Mother's Day if she wants one.
Happy hormones! I love those.
i had a great blt once at a bar called the Peanut in KC. They put shredded cheddar cheese on their BLT's, which is a nice variation.
I think the cheese is a mistake. And yes, BLT's are, in fact, the bomb. And bacon is good. As is evidenced by my cookbook Everything Tastes Better With Bacon. Even cookies. And Bacon Brittle. I am reminded of a Homer moment when confronted with the obviously absurd notion that bacon and sausage and yes even ham all come from the same animal. Homer indignantly refers to some wonderful mythical breakfast meat animal. Clearly, he was affected by the happy hormones. I think I may have to get a BLT for lunch. Mmmmm.
I love BLT's and can remember my mother making them on rainy summer days. What a nice memory. I LOVE BACON!
Hey Lisa, I left some Inf. in "Better Days."
I love bacon and pork. My brother and I used to cut off pieces of the hogs head and cook it over the fire. We used any kind of stick of long piece of metal we could find to do that.
That was when we grew, killed and butchered our own hogs. The way they are killed is to render them helpless, hang them by their hind feet and cut the jugular so the heart would pump the blood out of the body.
Unless I'm wrong that is still the way it is done.
Dad used to take me to slaughter houses and I never heard so much screeching, screaming and struggling to get away. It didn't bother me then. That was life and that was what animals were for. Now, when I eat a steak or KFC or bacon and eggs, I try not to remember what I witnessed when I was a kid, like the chickens are between two rails, a foot catcher on a conveyor belt grabs a foor and lifts the chicken, carries it along another conveyor which has a rotating cutter that is supposed to cut their heads off, but some of the chickens twist their heads and necks up to aviod death. That only make things worse for them because they are then taken on along to the machine that plucks and and butchers them alive.
That didn't bother me either and I try not to think about it now.
Cows? That is gruesome too.
I guess there is just no easy way to mass kill.
I know a bunch of fanatics that believe in being vegetarians and some that believe in eating vegetables that haven't been poisoned or anything like that. I went with a group of them to one of the "natural" cafes in L.A. one day and low and behold, a dang worm was crawling across my plate. I just let him crawl into my spoon and ate him too.
Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Honestly, I have found that most worms taste like the things they are eating and grasshoppers taste like green beans. I like to mash some of the black stuff out first.
I had to eat a lot of things in the Army. I found that grasshoppers don't taste much different if you boil them in a can or eat them alive.
Viva BLT's
True story: When we lived in Odessa, I once ate a live, grasshopper-like insect (it was bigger and greener than a grasshopper) just to amuse my fellow high-schoolers. This just goes to show that my entomophobia is nowhere near as severe as my suriphobia.
Now I think killing to amuse and eating meat when other options are available are both, for lack of a better term, "evil." I try to refrain from the first sin ("crime against the universe"?), but I make no effort to refrain from the second.
I heartily recommend MorningStar Farms Breakfast Strips - just put in the microwave for a couple of minutes on a paper towel, it comes out nice and crisp, and tastes delicious on a BLT, which has become one of my staples. Even my redneck brother says they are better than bacon, HONEST, he says. God, what fun we're all having!
i have enjoyed morning star farms bacon at your home and mine and appreciate the plug.
as for killing life when other options are available . . . i think death is a part of life. i don't think that eating animals is a bad thing, inherently. i think that eating the animals we get packaged in plastic and dyed a pretty fresh red color, animals whose shit has polluted rivers and ground water, animals who have been raised in disgusting conditions and whose consumers have no clue about where they came from is evil.
and yet, i still do it.
and i still drive my dumbass mini-suv all over town. and i still keep my air conditioner in my house set at too low of a temperature.
I'm not apathetic all of the time. and i'm not lazy all the time.
i can't say i'm doing my very best, but i also can't say i'm doing my very worst.
taking one day at a time . . .
swallowed a live minnow once.
Ha! I love the way this commentary board rocks wildly back and forth between subjects and voices. It's like your grandmother's kitchen table, a Vegan dorm room, and a Junior High School slumber party have all been relocated into the same space and the representatives from each space are vying with each other to take control.
Bless you lisa. Me too.
"for the ride," could you feel the fish swimming around in your stomach?
I have been on many Long Range Patrols where we went long periods w/o food. Mostly what we griped about was that we had no beer. One Sgt. ate some worms and said he could feel them trying to crawl out of his stomach and dreamed about it for several nights. We loved it, his misery. Once Gonzales got one leg in quick sand and we were laughing so hard it took us an hour to get him out. His face showed horror, he said, "all I could see was that movie version where the hand disappears into the quick sand." Anyway he was a little pissed off for a day or two. Ain't life great!
I don't know what suriphobia is and am not going to look it up. I'm a little, little bit of a hypochondriac. I sure don't want suriphobia.
suriphobia, for all you hypochondriacs out there, is fear of mice (i had to look it up).
and no matter what the level of your fear, i don't think eating the head of a mouse is anything like eating the head of a grasshopper.
I could not feel it in my stomach, but did feel it's tail thrashing it's way down my throat. It was part of a gross food eating contest during a "lock-in" at someone's church. My swallow won it for my team. The other girl puked, thus making her disqualified. Yippee!
LB, what does this mean? - 'I don't think eating the head of a mouse is anything like eating the head of a grasshopper.
I would rather eat a bowl full of grasshoppers than touch or be touched by a mouse.
See my references above to suriphobia, entomophobia, and eating the head of a grasshopper to follow LB's thread, Gene.
Thanks Steveorino. I never heard of anyone eating the head of a rat but I have read accounts of pow's eating rats. They're rodents like squirrels, I think.
We used to eat a lot of squirrel and dumplings, but cooked. Our dog would tree the rodent and we'd kill them with sling shots. Mother made us dress them, then she'd cut them up and cook them. mmmmmmmmm
We are wild rabbits too.
Heck we were so poor that whenever the dogs barked, me and my brothers would run and hide under the house.
The above has a typo. It should have read: "We ate wild rabbits too."
We also ate wild ducks and armadillos. Duck we caught by - Well I'm not going to tell any of the things that are cruel and gruesome. Nearly all wild animals can be caught w/o a gun, but it is usually cruel. To us as poor trash it was a necessity of life. We ate what we killed. Dads rule.
I read things in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep and am generally the last person on the planet to find something I'd like to respond to. Lisa, there is an almost perfect variation of the BLT you must consider trying. The PLT. Use whatever store bought Iceberg lettuce and tomatoes you have and spread your bread (or toast) with smooth peanut butter. it is wonderful. There is crunch, wetness without mess, and an indescribable combo of flavors. It is lots better than PB and bananas (yuck). This is a little more highbrow it you use alfalfa sprouts instead of Iceberg lettuce.
So try a small one.
Note to el Loco, I like being a wild rabbit, myself.
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