Life Lessons From a BLT Sandwich

Ok, so I went to make myself a nice BLT sandwich for lunch today, planning to take it to the backyard and sit in my favorite outdoor chair and eat it while enjoying the peace and quiet of the garden. I got out the Applewood bacon (as someone on this board recommended, thank you), cut two pieces of great semolina bakery bread, and lined up the full-fat mayo. Then, I went to look for my nice big $2.00 heirloom yellow tomato that I bought from the nice Amish teenage boy at the Farmer's market on Saturday. Well, my husband threw my heirloom tomato away because he thought it was an old tomato because it was deformed, mottled red and yellow, and full of cracks. :angry:

Life Lesson #1: The best things in life don't look perfect. The heirloom tomatoes have the best taste because they haven't been tampered with by plant engineering. So, they are not perfectly round, uncracked, uniformly red tomatoes that have been engineered to look that way (and to travel better and sit longer on supermarket shelves) and, as a consequence, have also lost some of their old-time fresh tomato taste.

Fortunately, I had a few other regular fresh red tomatoes from the market stashed away, so I survived that disappointment and went on to cook up my beautiful BLT on semolina bread, Applewood bacon, mayo, nice lettuce, buttered bread and had the lovely sandwich sitting on the plate on the counter and got ready to take it outside. My daughter saw the sandwich and said, "Can I have a bite?" Like a good mother, I rose above my own needs and said, "You can have half, Sweetie". (It almost killed me.) Anyway, I went outside to the garden and realized I gave away the half of the sandwich with most of the bacon. So I went inside to get some bacon off her half of the sandwich (I'm not THAT good a mother...) and there she was, eating her sandwich while playing on the computer! So, I told her that she couldn't eat such a good sandwich in front of the computer because she had to savor every bite rather than eat it on the side. If she wanted to eat in front of the computer, then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would do. So, she moved slowly away from the computer with her BLT sandwich.

Life Lesson #2: Some things in life are meant to be savored all by themselves and not treated as "asides". They are meant to be enjoyed mindfully and fully rather than taken-for-granted.

Sadly, fresh tomato and BLT sandwich time will be over here in Michigan (the tomatoes will be gone in about 3-4 weeks) and all that will be left will be the engineered perfectly red round tastless tomatoes -- and I'll stop eating BLTs until next August/September (which is probably a good thing healthwise, anyway).

Life Lesson #3: Many of the best things in life are fleeting -- which is another reason to savor them and enjoy them fully when you have them. Something new and wonderful will come along anyway (candy apples, acorn and butternut squash, pumpkin pie, hot toddies, hot baked bread fresh from the oven, bread pudding...) to be enjoyed in the moment.

OK, I feel better now. Thanks for listening.