BLTs, Please.

I was in the mood for a no-fuss kind of dinner last night. Luckily, BLT's were on the menu. I grew up eating BLT sandwiches. While I think that they're best in the summer with a tomato sliced fresh off of the vine, we ate them all year round. My mom's secret ingredient:


That's right. Peanut butter. Mayonnaise on one piece of bread, peanut butter on the other and bacon, lettuce, and tomato in between. And because this is the only way I'd ever eaten a BLT, I didn't think that the flavor combination was in any way strange. I still remember the first time someone pointed out that it was odd. I was well into my teens and my grandma took me to lunch at the diner in our little Indiana town. The BLT on the menu just sounded good and I ordered it. I remember how disappointing that first bite tasted. Something was definitely missing. I lifted the bread and looked underneath. Then I checked the other side. "Hey," I said to my grandma. "They left the peanut butter off of this." My grandma laughed a little and explained that not everyone eats them that way. I can't understand why not. When the waitress checked back, I asked if she had any peanut butter. She said they did and then she asked if I'd like some bread for the peanut butter. With a "no thank you", I explained that I needed the peanut butter for my sandwich. She just gave me a strange look and brought the peanut butter.

Last night, for the first time since that diner BLT, I decided to try my sandwich without peanut butter. I made an avocado spread instead. We'll get to that in a minute. Right now, I wanna talk about bacon. I have this theory that you're either a bacon or a sausage when it comes to breakfast meat. Me, I'm a bacon. I love a nice chewy-crisp piece o' bacon alongside my over-easy eggs in the a.m. My husband, he's a sausage guy. Links, patties, in his gravy...that's his breakfast meat of choice. For me,(Smoky Links, aside) sausage is great in recipes AND I'm cool with a nice Italian sausage with some grilled peppers and onions for dinner. I just don't want a patty of sausage with my eggs in the morning.

Whenever we go out to breakfast, I order bacon. I've eaten a wide variety of bacon(Tee hee. Funny that I should use the word "wide" when talking about bacon). I guess I'm somewhat of a bacon connoiseur. You might imagine that I have a favorite bacon. I do. It's Stonie's Hickory Smoked Cured Bacon all the way from Missouri. I'm serious, this bacon tops all of the other bacon that I've ever tasted. I first tried this bacon 5 or 6 years ago. I was visiting my family's lake property in Missouri and my parents took me by Stonie's Sausage Shop to stock up for a weekend's worth of grilling and breakfast meat. My dad fried the bacon for breakfast the next morning. It was unbelievable! It's so good in fact, that when we have it in the house, my husband becomes a "bacon man". Stonie's does a great job on sausage too, but their bacon is out-of-this-world good.


Don't believe me that I'm a bacon expert? Okay, I'm going to let you in on a secret. This is against the advice of my "city boy" husband who had never set foot on a farm until the day that he went home to meet my parents nearly 12 years ago. Anyone seen that Paulie Shore movie "Son In Law"? My dear husband actually once said, "Babe, maybe that's not really something that you want to tell people...that you were the County Pork Queen." Yep. That's right. 16 or so years ago, I was selected to represent my county's Pork Producer Association as THE pork queen. I know, such an honor.

Here I am fulfilling one of my Pork Queen responsibilities, handing out ribbons at the County Fair Swine Show.



Check out my ultra-cool big, puffy hair bow. Clearly, I was in style...look at that other chic's hair bow.


I wasn't just there to hand out ribbons. Oh no. I was there to show off my very own specimen of swine that I raised in our barn. See, I told you. I'm a bit of an expert when it comes to bacon. I've been up close and personal with the source. A spokesperson of swine, even.


Alrighty, so now that we've established my credibility as a bacon expert, let's fry some up for our BLTs. I ended up frying 6 extra slices for the quiche that I made for dinner tonight.


Bacon lovers of the world unite! Doesn't this look yummy? Don't be ashamed...


My BLT building station is all ready. Oh yeah, I was going to tell you about the avacado spread. I just mashed a ripe avocado, squeezed a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice, and added some salt and cayenne pepper. Then I stirred it all up.


Oh wait, I forgot the peanut butter!
No, not peanut butter. Step away from the peanut butter. Avocado. No peanut butter allowed! C'mon Krista. Focus already.


You all can probably take it from here. I spread one piece of the bread with mayo and the other with the avocado spread.


Pile on the bacon. Oh, glorious bacon.


And of course the "L" and the "T".


There you have it. Simple Wednesday night dinner. I told you that I was ready for a no-fuss meal, hence the paper plates. Not terribly "green" of me. Although, I am an avid re-cycler lately. Still, I know ya'll have those days when you can't muster the energy to even lift one more plate into the dishwasher. This is where I found myself last night.

Oh, and the verdict on my BLT's with avocado? Delicious. I mean, how bad could it be with my favorite bacon in there? Still, I found myself longing for peanut butter with every bite. So, next time I'll stick with what I love best, perfect bacon-lettuce-tomato-mayonnaise-peanut butter sandwiches. However, that avacado spread worked wonderfully at lunch today when I constructed a turkey club sandwich. Mayo and avocado spread on the bread, roast turkey, leftover bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Perfection.