B! L! T!

Jenean and I were driving home from somewhere last weekend, and we were discussing what we had left of our meat CSA - a modestly sized ham steak, and a package of super thick sliced smoked bacon. I said, what totally awesome use of bacon is there? What should we do?

And then Jenean had one of the all time great ideas - we should make BLTs. Axel F had picked up the CSA, and I called him to confirm that we had gotten a couple tomatoes and a lot of lettuce. So Jenean and I stopped at Trader Joes for some good white bread (they call it "The Shepherd's Bread"), and then I made a special trip to the 7-Eleven for Hellmann's mayonnaise (I will accept no substitution when it comes to mayo - I grew up on the west coast so I prefer to call it Best Foods*, but it's the same mayo, i.e. the best mayo money can buy, hands down, no doubt about it).

Then we agreed that the best way to cook that beautiful bacon was to bake it, so I put my cooling rack inside my sheet pan, and laid out the bacon slices, and baked them at 450 for about 20 minutes. To be honest, my actual timing method was: when F said, "hey, that bacon is smelling good," that's when i went it to check on it, and it was done. Boom. Pulled it out, and while it cooled down and crisped up, I toasted bread, sliced tomatoes, selected lettuce leaves, spread mayo on said bread, laid on the bacon, then the lettuce, then the tomato, then salt and pepper, then topped with another slice of bread (also spread with mayo of course).

Let me tell you how awesome that bacon was - about a quarter inch thick, and the package happened to have 15 slices. That meant 5 beautiful thick smoky slices per person, meaning that in combination with the best mayo money can buy, the freshest ripest tomato in big thick juicy slices, and some crispy lettuce, we had the world's best BLT. It's not hard to get there, really. You should probably do it.
Thanks to Axel F for the muy romantico pictures.

*You probably already know this, but Best Foods and Hellmann's are the same company. Best Foods is obviously the better name than Hellmann's, especially considering their jingle: Bring out the Best Foods, and Bring out the Best! It's a lame jingle for Hellmann's, and yet, east of the Mississippi, they say Bring out the Hellmann's and Bring the Best. Lame, I say! But... it is the best.