An Ode to Bacon and BLTs

Bacon from the butcher shop in town

Tomaotes on my kitchen windowsill

 

Ingredients for a BLT sandwich

One of my favorite summertime meals — BLTs

Summertime means fresh tomatoes.  I miss the homegrown ones, but I find that the on-the-vine tomatoes at the supermarket are reasonable substitutes.  One of my favorite summertime meals is a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

Song to Bacon
by Roy Blount, Jr.

Consumer groups have gone and taken
Some of the savor out of bacon.
Protein-per-penny in bacon, they say,
Equals needles-per-square-inch of hay.
Well, I know, after cooking all
That’s left to eat is mighty small
(You also get a lot of lossage
In life, romance, and country sausage),
And I will vote for making it cheaper,
Wider, longer, leaner, deeper,
But let’s not throw the baby, please,
Out with the (visual rhyme here) grease.
There’s nothing crumbles like bacon still,
And I don’t think there ever will
Be anything, what e’er you use
For meat, that chews like bacon chews.
And also:  I wish these groups would tell
Me whether they counted in the smell.
The smell of cooking’s worth $2.10 a pound —
And how ’bout the sound?