One of my favorite sandwiches to make (and to eat) is a B.L.T.. However, like most people who are products of the 21st century, I am easily bored. Inspired by the Not-Just-A-B.L.T. at the Orange Cat Cafe in Kingfield, ME, I choose to put my own spin on the B.L.T.
First, I find some quality bread and make toast. Most times, I use marble-rye, but today I found a loaf of wheat bread from Standard Baking Company in Portland, ME. Once the toast is made, I determine a bottom piece, and put some sort of spicy mustard on it.
I'm not going to lie, I am a mustard fan. If mustard told me to jump, I would say, "How high?" So, the idea of me preparing anything that did not involve mustard would have to come with a pretty good reason why it was left out...or it would hear it from me.
Next, Bacon. Bacon is a sentence in itself. It is a
noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and pronoun all combined in one beautiful piece of meat which is also a vegetable. Bacon. or, "I just Baconed the hell out of that exam." Also, Bacon should always be capitalized. It is as notable as a public official, and probably more effective in getting things done. Bacon. Bacon. Bacon? Bacon.
I found some nitrate free, uncured Bacon. It is delicious (obviously). It fries well, it has a good taste, and well, it makes me tear up inside a little bit whenever the package runs out. I dedicate this picture to you, you perfect pieces of Bacon.
Here's were it gets interesting. I found some smoke gouda in the part of the grocery store where all the fancy cheese is kept. I always feel snobbish when I stand there and admire cheese. I just love cheese! Is that so wrong? Bacon doesn't think so, and neither do I.
You might wonder why I put cheese on a B.L.T. and didn't call it a B.L.T.C. or something like that. I just don't want to make it to complicated. I cook free form, who knows if I ended up going crazy here, the sandwich would end up being called a B.L.T.C.H.X.T.M.. Who wants to keep track of that stuff? Not this guy. The line has to be drawn somewhere. And that place is here. B.L.T. tells the truth. The Bacon makes it self affirming anyway. You already know the basic sandwich, have a little adventure in your life, who knows, maybe you'll like it.
One of my favorite foods is the pickle. At Sugarloaf, they always told us to "give 'em the pickle." Apparently, that was a code for good customer service. Administration seemed to also use it the other way around and gave us, the staff, the pickle by paying less than a living wage, and denying proper benefits and overtime. But hey, at least they let me drive a snowmobile all night.
Anyway, back to the sandwich. I checked with Bacon, and Bacon said it was alright to use pickles so long as they were good pickles. I assured Bacon that I only use the best pickles in my cuisine. I picked up a couple recipes from Uncle's Farm Stand at the Monument Square Farmers' Market last Wednesday. So glad I did. These are the baby dills that I sliced up for sandwich purposes. When I complimented the man behind the farm stand for having such excellent pickles, he told me, "My family has been selling these pickles at this farmers' market for the last hundred years." Well, Bacon and I both hope that his great-grandson can say something like that in another hundred years.
The next step is the traditional second step, the "L". Not so important to capitalize this one, as many view the lettuce as more of a filler. Personally, I enjoy the crunch of it, and I try to pick up either the red leaf or the green leaf lettuce for the nutrients it has inside it. Some people like iceberg lettuce. I think of that stuff as all water. I mean, what's the point?
Clearly, in this situation, the lettuce has importance, it adds color contrast in the center. It caps off the cheese and the pickles to shield them from the eyes of skeptics, and it provides valuable companionship for Bacon, who occasionally can become quite solitary. It's lonely at the top. Bacon appreciates lettuce.
I try to find local food. I was impressed by these Backyard Farms tomatoes. They come from somewhere in Maine, possibly Madison. They seem to have been grown in a greenhouse, which is fine with me, because Maine doesn't support year-round tomato production in outdoor settings. I do however, enjoy year round tomato eating. That's one thing I'll miss in the post-Apocalypse.
For greenhouse tomatoes, these are pretty tasty. Not as tasty as those that will come out of the garden later this summer, though (More on this in coming months).
My final ingredient is a combination of my love for mayonnaise and my love for horseradish. I combine the two, with some black pepper, and get some delicious horseradish mayo to cap off the sandwich. I even drizzled a little bit on the tomatoes because I thought it looked good on them.
I am almost unable to picture a situation involving too much mayonnaise. It's like having too much Bacon. It's ridiculous to even talk about. To all the people who enjoy mayonnaise, I salute you. Slather it on. You'll be glad that you did.
And that is how you make a B.L.T. in my kitchen. I enjoyed making it as much as I enjoyed eating it. Bacon even said that the sandwich looked good, but Bacon can be vain (although I don't blame Bacon for that character trait).
As far as background imagery goes, while I am pretty sure that George Bush does indeed ski in jeans, I am just as sure that I wouldn't want to ride the mountain that would be suitable for someone like him. Unless it's Telluride, because there is no way that someone like him could fully appreciate a mountain like that. I'll keep Telluride, but the rest of you mountains, you ought to realize that you'll get no ticket money from me if you let an asshole like that poison your slopes. It's bad enough that Dick Cheney lives so close to Jackson Hole. I just reassure myself that he is too old and decrepit to handle a mountain like that. I could barely handle it and I'm in my twenties.
The conclusion is that despite the possibilities of the scramble, it may not be appropriate in this situation. The other two were cracked into the muffin tin over the meat foundation, covered in a layer of fried potatoes and a layer of cheese. I love cheese. I love cheese sooooo much. I should buy stock in cheese. Cheese would in no way be responsible for a Wall Street-style crash. Cheese can only produce goodness. Cheese is Bacon's best friend. Remember that. Anyway, as you see it pictured, that is how it went into the oven set at 350 degrees. I don't know how long I cooked it, because I was also working on my next batch of Kombucha and cleaning the kitchen.
