How to Make a Perfect BLT
What makes a BLT the perfect sandwich? It’s the bacon, isn’t it? Of course it’s the bacon! It’s always the bacon. But wait, what about the tomato? Ah, equally essential! You absolutely need a fat slice or two of flavorful, perfectly ripe tomato. And then, not least, there’s the lettuce. Limp lettuce could never do. The crisp bite of cold iceberg lettuce is crucial. Yes, it takes all three elements — the B, the L, and the T — working together as one delicious whole. Here’s how to make the best BLT.
We’ll start with the bacon, as any reasonable person would. For tips and advice on creating the best bacon for BLTs, we turn to resident bacophile Chef John. He recommends baking the bacon. You might say, he’s a bacon baker.
How to Make Perfect Bacon for BLTs
Chef John’s bacon-for-BLTs method involves several easy steps. It may take a few minutes more on the front end, but you’ll save that time on the clean-up end.
Step 1: Break Out the Heavy-Duty Aluminum Foil
Tear off a piece of foil that’s twice as long as your baking sheet. Watch the video below to see Chef John’s patented pull-and-pinch method for prepping the foil. “Using heavy duty aluminum foil and creating some valleys for the bacon fat to flow results in perfectly flat, perfectly crisp, yet still succulent strips of bacon,” says Chef John. “Perfect for a BLT!”
Step 2: Place the Bacon on the Aluminum Foil.
Place the pinched, ridged foil on your baking sheet and lay the bacon down across the foil. You can go perpendicular to the pinched peaks (the preferred method) or horizontal — ultimately, it doesn’t matter all that much. Either way, the bacon fat will drain into the troughs.
Step 3: Bake Your Bacon
Place the bacon in an oven preheated to 375 degrees F and bake it to beautiful — about 25 to 30 minutes.
Why is this the best way to cook bacon for BLTs? Chef John explains: “The fat runs down into the crevices, so the bacon cooks above the fat and not in it. And that produces a very even doneness and superior texture. You get a beautiful crisp strip. But it’s not dry. It’s still tender and succulent. Perfect for a BLT.”
If bacon’s the boss of the BLT, then ripe, juicy tomatoes are the chairman of the BLT board. Thick slices of tomato provide the essential juicy counterpart and soft mouthfeel to the crispy, flavorful bacon. The best tomatoes are large, dense, slicing tomatoes, preferably heirloom, and obviously in season. True, you can find big red tomatoes in the store year-round; but if you’re in search of the perfect BLT, you’ll only realize your quest when tomatoes are in peak season.
Let Us Discuss Lettuce
Iceberg lettuce is the classic choice for a reason. It’s that crunchy character and overall excellent texture. Also worthy, romaine lettuce. Fancy-pants folks will experiment with arugula and the like, and that’s fine, nice for a change of pace. But in pursuit of the perfect BLT, we’ll go with iceberg all the way. (Save a section of iceberg for these Wedge Salads on a Stick).
Bread and Mayo
So we’ve gotten this far and haven’t even mentioned the ingredient that provides the sandwiching. The bread. Again, feel free to go low brow here. A couple slices of toasted white bread make an ideal foil for the B and the T. You’ll just want to slather ‘em up with enough mayonnaise. No need to make your own fancy mayo from fresh eggs — unscrew a jar and have a ball. Just be sure to provide enough moisture.
How to Layer Your BLT
Add mayo to both slices of toast. Lay down a bed of lettuce on the bottom piece of toast. Next, the bacon. Finally, the tomato slices. Viola, the perfect BLT!
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-make-perfect-blt/
Late Summer Mother's Classic Comfort Food! Perfect! Best with still warm garden tomatoes! Yumm!
For those put off by off the shelf mayo! :O)
(Rancid whipped canola oil in jar in the refrigerator which was opened 6 months ago? Horders Mayo....I understand completely. )
(Off to previous commitment.)
These was taken at a bus stop.
Locals told us the sun sets at 2:30 in the winter! So the season is short-lived.
These are from my own garden:
Hibiscus:
Canna Lilies
And my pineapple lily - much smaller than usual this year:
And, my helpers!
I use guacamole instead of mayo. It’s an LBGT samich.
Site has current conditions too and auto-refreshes every 5 minutes. It's a very lightweight text page though.
An accurate forecast would help but that's never going to happen where I am. NWS says 50-60% chance of rain Tonight/Tomorrow that might be heavy so I'm gonna go grab all the tomatoes with signs of ripening to be safe.
This has all the MO Ag related weather station locations. http://agebb.missouri.edu/weather/stations/index.php
People in other states might have the same. AG Research Centers all have a weather station for their own use. I would think most out it online these days.
The 2nd planting sweet corn is up nicely aside from the seeds that some thieving varmint has been digging up and eating. I've replanted skips twice now. If this keeps up I'll need to buy a Trunk Monkey for the greenhouse.
The tomato cuttings I took last week are all blighted. If it ever dries up enough to stick them in the dirt I will, but I don't have much hope of them making any tomatoes.
Pole beans are doing great. Sweet bell peppers are making monsters. 2nd planting pickling cukes is up and looks good. Late planted zucchini is up and looks good. Carrots are doing great - Mrs. Augie has been getting ~1/2 gallon of juice every time I thin the beds. Best crop of carrots I've ever raised.
The Dunstan Chestnuts are doing really well this summer. 6 of the 10 that were planted last spring are out of their grow tubes. I need five more to finish out my grove. Three additional and replace two that aren't doing well. I've dug and potted three black walnut saplings that came volunteer in the victory garden last spring. I just need to figure out where I want to plant them once they go dormant for winter.
BLT Pasta Salad
It’s the classic sandwich turned into a cookout side dish!
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/food-cooking/recipes/a36068261/blt-pasta-salad-recipe/
Of course, use low-cal ingredients wherever you want to; I don’t find that it changes the flavor at all. :)
Still researching greenhouse/tunnel automation. Soil moisture sensors are the hard part. Seems there's mostly no-brand china stuff available that's not well built and only have a depth of 2 inches or less. Another issue and the reason for lack of choice is that it's a difficult thing to sense soil moisture with a device. Soil is very variable in nature so taking readings from sand is completely different than clay.
Example - doesn't look very rugged and only goes deep enough for small lettuce/greens or seedlings. Not going to help with tap roots of large plants. 
I ordered a better one last night that's about 4 inches long on the blade part that goes in the soil.(A small Utah based company.)
This is what Davis Instruments and others have that are more of a pro version(with a pro price). I'm going to get on and compare it with the above one I bought last night.
Pretty much representative of DIY garden/greenhouse/tunnel automation. A bunch of low quality junk. The alternative is genuine commercial grade proprietary systems from companies who don't sell components or have any prices on their websites because they're strictly B2B and don't deal with the general public.
Since I work industrial maintenance at a factory that has a lot of automation, I've been bouncing back and forth between the DIY stuff and industrial stuff and basically want the best of both worlds. Since I've only been doing industrial maintenance for 8 months, I'm hardly an automation or industrial control circuit guru. My inclination with this garden automation is to go with the industrial stuff to learn things that will help my position at work. My love of tech is in opposition to my wallet however. A nice sized controller with color touch screen is a four digit price tag and not necessary, just cool.
This
Does the same thing as this
The difference is that with the top one, if I'm in the tunnel and decide I want to close one of the sides for a minute for some reason, I would need to plug my tablet into it and would have to go to the house to get it or make sure I bring it with me every time I go out to the tunnel. With a PLC(Programmable Logic Controller) with touch screen, I could do it right then and there. The two line, monochrome LCD display PLCs are pretty cheap. I'm eyeballing this one for less than $200 on ebay.
It's already mounted in a $130 weather proof box and has three $20 relays in it that I would definitely make use of. It's a steal and they have a couple of these at work so I have all the tech support I need LOL. That and when my 1 year review comes around and I've learned PLC automation, I can bargain for a pretty good raise and get away from some of the grunt work. Funny how things work out. I'd been thinking about automation for the tunnel for a couple of years now but had no idea I'd end up working maintenance at a place that uses a ton of automation. If I get the above PLC, I can connect it to the soil moisture sensor I just bought and would be able to control my little drip system to learn and practice this stuff. That is if it ever stops raining on a regular basis. I haven't needed to water in weeks.
Finally found a company, also out of Utah, that has industrial level products and sells individual components to the public at decent prices. One of their goals is to serve all scales of automation needs. https://www.controlbyweb.com/applications/smart-greenhouse-automation.html
But the real reason for this post is to share this pic:
Automated tunnel mania. Costa Farms - a use case/showcase on ControlByWeb (which despite the name, does not need to connect to internet - optional). Costa Farms is one of the biggest growers on the planet with multiple locations like this and they don't even grow food. They grow and sell house plants.
ControlByWeb even mentions closing vents in high wind which is my biggest need for automation. We get wind here in the Ozarks which sits on the edge of tornado alley. It's mainly the full length drop down/roll up sides that will need to be closed in high wind.(35 mph gusts + freshly transplanted seedlings = bad) That means an anemometer connected to a PLC that controls DC motors that operate the sides. ControlByWeb integrates with and sells Davis Weather Stations yet is open enough to work with other systems and WeatherFlow has a weather station that will work and is half the price.
Of course partially opening/closing would be nice but adds complexity. The mechanical aspect of building the sides will be tricky but fun. It's not something I can buy off the shelf so I'll have to fabricate it. My plan is horizontal bi-fold sides like a hangar or some shop doors.
But the tunnel sides will drop down instead of lift up to protect seedlings and keep walking/hopping critters out. I'll have to find a way to block the open triangles on the ends at the fold. It will drop down to about 12 inches up/tall so I could just put some 12 inch tall mini walls in ground on the ends. Couple little posts with metal roofing scraps wired to them.
Irrigation is something I'd like to automate as well even though I can go by feel. Soil moisture sensors in conjunction with going by feel and observation of the plants would help me come up with a simple time/volume based irrigation schedule. At that point, the soil moisture sensors would just collect data and not control anything. Irrigation will be broken up into zones/rows so if I grow something in two rows that likes a lot of water, I can water them more often or for a longer time than the rest by changing some numbers.
Gable vents with or without fans are already available as self contained units that operate based on temperature but it would be nice to automate those more fully too. Don't need a fan trying to fight a 25 mph wind. Might want to close one gable vent that's in the direction of the wind in a bad rain storm too so that one end of the tunnel doesn't get swamped.
The big operations even automate their shade cloth but I won't be doing that.
But now I must go finish a goat shed. Got the floor framed up. I designed it with a 16x16 support grid for all four sides of four 4x4 pallets to sit on. Some pallets have thick boards close together and work good for a floor. I knew a guy in FL who made a 20x20 deck out of them. When the pallets get nasty or boards rot and/or break, I can lift pallet(s) out and drop pallet(s) in. Free replaceable flooring. Sides and roof will be corrugated tin a neighbor buddy gave me a few years back. Spent $200 for framing wood and $30-40 for screws.
Bird news:
The young Red-shouldered hawk is hanging around - currently ‘screaming’, which it does a lot. I saw it sitting on a fence post the other day - that fence is the boundary between the wooded neighbor’s property (squirrel haven) and ours. We have a fence perpendicular to the boundary fence & that is the squirrel ‘highway’ to our backyard. The hawk has evidently figured this out. Since the hawk started hanging around, I have not seen a single squirrel in the backyard, nor have they been tearing up my sunflowers, which have gone to seed. Also, not a single squirrel spotted in the front field either LOL! I love hawks & Red-shouldered are my favorite: rufous breast, black/white striping on back & top of tail, a large hawk & beautiful.
The hummers are draining one of my 2 feeders every other day. I saw why yesterday - there was a ‘flock’ of hummers around that feeder, at least 4 & I think maybe 5. They were chasing each other & taking turns at the feeder. The other feeder is getting plenty of visitors, but mostly one at a time & that feeder empties at half the speed of the other one. After a very slow start this spring, there are loads of hummers this year (yay - I love the little guys/gals).