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When I was young I scarcely ate any vegetables. Mom mostly boiled them and... well I love the woman but she worked as well as taking care of everything at home, and cooking wasn't her specialty. She had nine siblings and in that household you ate whatever the hell you got. Dad lost both his parents before he was ten, one to alcoholism and one to aneurysm. He was shunted from one caretaker to another and by the time he left his foster parents at 18 he had only learned to burn things and preferred them that way. Anyway, we didn't eat a lot of fresh veggies. And even if we did, grocery store tomatoes suck rear end. I used to think I hated tomatoes. Nope, I just hate the bland, spray-ripened bullshit in grocery stores. If you've spent any time gardening, you eventually recognize that the ones you see in the produce aisle are too pale, and the wrong shade of red. Anyway, Somehow despite having some minor brain problems, I've gotten married, had a child, bought a house and now have space for a garden. Anyway I started growing tomatoes to make homemade pasta sauce, and in doing so realized I actually like them in other things too! Enter, the garden-grown tomato.  Don't ask me what kind it is. I don't know. I only know the sound it makes when it feeds a man. This is the first one to ripen this summer! I also am growing several varieties and don't remember which plant this one came from. I'll look it up later if I remember. This is a BLT  Makes 3 sandwiches 1 lb Bacon mayo 1-2 fresh tomatoes 1 head of green-lead or red-leaf lettuce 3 pickles Additional greens (optional) butter (optional for grilled toast) I like to serve my BLTs with just chips. This is just a simple dinner I like to throw together when it's hot out, I don't want to do a ton of cooking and our garden is finally showing some results. Mmm, jalapeno.  Right away we have an issue: I thought we had some whole wheat bread in the house and apparently I was wrong. Scrambling for something else to put these on, I discover we still have some cheddar sandwich rolls in the freezer leftover from a giant Costco bag. Die rolls, die!  And since these are a bit bulkier, I decided to do something a little odd and toast them on the cast iron pan. Hence the butter. This is some nice grass-fed butter I wouldn't usually have in the house because I'm cheap.  And while we have cutting board out...  Let this be a lesson to the rest of you tomatoes! I like mine sliced thin in a heap. My wife prefers hers in one or two big thick slice. Kiddo is kinda in between.   For greens, we mostly have the red leaf lettuce shown above but I also remembered last minute that there's a little nappa cabbage left from a stir-fry I made prior in the week, so in it goes. I slice the central rib out of the leaves. I want my green to lay flat in a nice neat stack.  Three separate plates with subtle differences. I prefer a ton of greens. Wife likes fewer greens. Kiddo's doesn't really matter because it's 50/50 on whether she's going to eat the or just leave them off to the side. And now we butter the rolls. It looks a lot thicker than it actually is and I end up putting away a bunch of the melted butter for an omellette tomorrow morning.  Well, let's get this show on the road.  Bacon in the skillet. Rolls go one at a time in the cast iron until they develop some grill marks. Mug for bacon grease in the background that for some reason features Freud on it. While I love bacon, I hate the mess it leaves. Eugh. I cook the bacon about 1/3d of the package at a time.  This was particularly fatty bacon. There was a tiny bit of grease in here from the last time I made some (with pancakes a few days prior), but not a whole lot and the mug is like 2/3s full. This is a minor problem because I eventually come to realize that toasting the rolls causes them to ooze cheese grease.  Oh yeah, I forgot to get out the pickles earlier. Oh well, no big dill.  Time for the mayo. Here comes problem #2. Grilling them like this has left trenches in the rolls which the mayo is getting into and this means that the bread is even greasier now. I do my best to not go overboard but yeah, it's gonna be a bit much. I normally like a little more mayo and my wife prefers just a very thin coating, but we're both ending up with the same amount as I'm trying to scrape it off of mine and I just can't effectively get any more out of hers.   Stack on the bacon, evenly distributed between the three sandwiches. Then comes the tomatoes. Then the greens. I put a little dab of mayo between the tomatoes and greens to stick everything together a little better but probably shouldn't have this time. And what follows is a complete BLT! Wife's was the most photogenic. The thicker slice of tomato really stands out.  And our daughter's. She didn't like the jalapeno Kettle chips and opted for cool ranch Doritos.  And mine. Not a whole lot of difference. I wanted a beer with a lighter flavor and a bit of sharpness to cut the greasiness of the BLT and Lost Nation's The Wind gose fit the bill.   Last pic probably belong in the anti food porn thread but these turned out really nice if a bit greasy. The basic whole wheat was really missed though. I typically just crisp up the slices in the toaster and they're kinda necessary as the plain bread soaks up fat. Grilling the rolls also added a couple of extra steps to what is supposed to be a super simple recipe and isn't quite in the spirit I intended, but overall no complaints. Just a meal that required a few extra napkins. And that is that. Edit: made an edit for a stupid comment that didn't belong in here. Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jul 29, 2022 |
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Jul 29, 2022 17:00
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| # ? May 5, 2024 01:14 |
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Aside: Lost Nation is fuckin' great and if you ever find yourself in northern Vermont you should absolutely drop by. We were in the area on vacation just a few weeks ago. Sad to say they dropped my favorite item from the menu (a pork belly sandwich, no surprise there) but everything else is really good too. Had a lovely pulled pork plate with both Carolina style BBQ sauce and an Alabama style. Not at the same time. I'd never tried Alabama BBQ and just asked for some on the side. They've also got a homemade hummus appetizer that's really good with crispy chickpeas on top.
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Jul 29, 2022 17:02
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Excellent layering on that money shot! Cheese rolls seems like a nice accidental upgrade, whether they toast neatly or not. Gose beers are fantastic and now I need to seek more out. One measure of a good ICSA entry to me is whether it will inspire me to make something similar soon, and you definitely succeeded here 
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Jul 29, 2022 19:09
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gently caress yeah I love me a summer blt with a tomato out of the garden good poo poo yo
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Jul 29, 2022 19:12
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Kettle Brand Jalapeno are the GOAT. And now I know to pair them with a bangin' BLT.
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Jul 29, 2022 21:20
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mmm that looks delicious! totally with you on the love for a good tomato, I don't grow them but a particular farm stand near here reliably has excellent tomatoes they grow themselves.
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Jul 30, 2022 12:47
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Manifisto posted:mmm that looks delicious! totally with you on the love for a good tomato, I don't grow them but a particular farm stand near here reliably has excellent tomatoes they grow themselves. Thanks! And to everyone else who's commented. For the curious, the tomato was a Supersonic, which is apparently a Celebrity tomato hybrid. I'm also growing Lemon Boys and Sungold cherry tomatoes. I'm a little limited in what I can grow because we have a ton of trees around our house and thus a lot of shade, so I tend to go for Early Girls or tomatoes that fruit faster. A bunch of my Supersonics have blossom end rot though (we're in a drought here) and I've ended up just whipping them into the woods for the local wildlife to enjoy.  AngryRobotsInc posted:Kettle Brand Jalapeno are the GOAT. And now I know to pair them with a bangin' BLT. Kettle rules. I debated going with a cheaper chip that was on sale but I couldn't turn them down.
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Aug 2, 2022 00:59
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| # ? May 5, 2024 01:14 |
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Learned I've never had a BLT today. At least, not one this good.
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Aug 15, 2022 18:17
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