The seeds of my BLT were planted in the dead of winter when the first garden catalogs arrived in my mailbox. Winter never gets too far along before I begin thinking about spring. I glanced through the pages of my catalogs and the explosion of color that is notably absent during the winter months jumped from the pages. Tomatoes in a multitude of varieties and colors – with names like Red Lightning, Mr. Stripey, Little Mama, Green Zebra, Big Zac, Cherokee Purple, and Oh Happy Day in bright reds, yellows, and greens filled the pages.
I love tomatoes about any way you can fix them; raw, roasted, fried green, in a tart, stuffed or pickled. But there is one way I enjoy a tomato that defines summer for me, and that is in a BLT. Of all the things I plant in my garden, it is my tomatoes that define it. The lettuce can go to seed, the zucchini can rot on the vine, and the beetles can chew up my kale, but my tomato plants are my children, my offspring.
My BLT actually began to take shape last fall. I prepared the soil of my garden by adding the summer’s compost and then heaped on a good pile of late autumn leaves. The rotting jack-o-lanterns from Halloween were thrown in for good measure. Perhaps to my neighbor’s dismay, I liberally threw kitchen waste on top of the pile throughout the winter months; egg shells, coffee grounds, and vegetable waste added to the soup.
As the days grew longer and the first of May approached, I began to get the itch to hit the nursery and find out what varieties of tomatoes would be available this season. I always choose carefully, never wanting a plant that has already fruited or contains too many flowers. Preferring a plant about 8 to 10 inches tall, I want the energy it gives to bearing fruit to come from my garden soil; no artificial ingredients of any kind, purely organic.
Although I always plant what I call a standard bearer such as Early Girl, Better Boy, or Beefsteak, I always choose an heirloom variety to spice up the kitchen a bit. This year, I chose a Black Prince variety, native to Siberia. I must admit that it was hard to imagine a tomato growing there but it has done just fine in my backyard.
As I do with each of my plants, I nurture each one quite carefully, giving it just the right amount of water and watch closely for pests. My efforts soon bore fruit, and I plucked the first tomato from the vine just over a week ago. Tempting as it might have been to carve up the first fruit into a few raw slices and consume them au naturel, I instead sliced them thin in anticipation of that first BLT.
The BLT, the consummate summer sandwich, has been a staple of my diet since childhood. A sandwich of the vine and turf, perhaps the Midwest version of the surf and turf, pigs in a blanket, or whatever you want to call it. Two slices of whole wheat bread toasted to perfection; Hellman’s mayonnaise spread liberally and evenly on each slice. Then, carefully picked lettuce leaves from the garden laid on the bread, forming the second layer of this carefully planned sandwich. Then, the fruit of the vine, tomato slices cut from a tomato about the size of a baseball. This tomato is chosen carefully, free from blemishes and perfectly ripe, each slice about ¼ inch thick; the lettuce forming a perfect bed for an ample helping of this summer fruit. Ah, and the bacon, thick sliced, and fried just short of crispy. I hate to say how much I use lest my doctor suffer a stroke. Carefully laying the last piece of bread on top, I have now created my culinary masterpiece, the fruit of summer. I take that first bite and my mouth comes alive and I savor each one that follows, wishing at the end that my stomach was just a little bit larger and another BLT laid in wait.
The taste of this delightful sandwich conjures up memories of summers past; the whir of locusts, sparklers on the 4th of July, corn on the cob, watermelon and cantaloupe fresh from the market, baseball games, fishing with a cane pole and bobber, going barefoot in the grass, all part of my truly Midwestern experience. I still have my copy of Alice Low’s book, Summer, that I read as a child and it still resonates with me. I particularly enjoy her closing sentence for it perfectly describes the end of a summer day for me,
“We stay awake and think of things…the happy things that summer brings!”
I still vividly remember the end of those glorious days of summer, lying in bed feeling quite tired but fulfilled, and wondering as I drifted off to sleep what adventure the next day would bring.
So as long as I am able, I will choose the seeds of my garden wisely and carefully plant them in the spring. If I cultivate them properly, I will again be able to savor each bite of that first BLT and along with it, the memories of summers past. Winter can drive me to melancholy but I know that the new birth of the next spring will come and with it summer’s fruit and the happy things that summer brings.
