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Looks like a red crap sandwich, mushy innards.

A REAL tomato sandwich needs the following:

1. Good, solid tomatoes such as Early Girl, or other similarly solid-inner-meat tomato breeds. Heirlooms’ suck. Look like a witches butt and taste like them.

Even Big Boy and a few older species are more solid, have a better taste/consistency, and can be grown in your garden. On occasion, you’ll get a good, solid Beefstake tomato. Don’t buy the large ones. They become mushy overnight.

THESE are largely summer tomatoes when they get good sun and make a good internal sugar for flavor enhancement.

2. CUT THEM THINLY, not thickly. A thick tomato, esp. one that has little taste, is like biting into a slice of wood. Even mayo won’t save it. The thinner the tomato slice, the better the Mayos taste (Hellman’s, Hellman’s Light or Dukes) because it blends with the “sweet meat” of the slice. Thick slices don’t hold the mayo decently and have a woody taste and texture.

3. Rye bread is great as is a nicely toasted white bread (Maiers is good. Pepperidge Farms Italian is good. Dave’s has a nice mix of rye-light breads and there is a new brand, The Rustik Oven (as close to a moist rye bread as you can get without it being Rye proper, which you can’t get in a commercially baked brand).

Also a good Italian hoagie/sub roll, about 12 inches long, and fresh, soft (can be lightly toasted), makes a great sandwich too.

4. Lettuce - Iceberg, chilled, not frozen, best leafs from the inner, whiter thick parts. Eat either as a leaf or long shredded.

5. You can add ketchup to make a Russian dressing.

6. Add freshly cooked bacon for a superb BLT.

7. Some good American yellow/orange cheese, sliced thinly, or even a good Swiss (try imported Finland or if you have a Harris-Tetter around, their Simplicity Swiss, also imported, thinly sliced and very good taste).

8. EAT AND ENJOY.

Been eating BLT’s since the early 1950’s and grew many of those tomatoes myself.