The BLTA – Bacon, Lettuce, Tongue and Avocado – Sandwich

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I love a sweet, juicy, warm summer tomato, and I love a typical BLTA.  But when snow is falling and the tomatoes at the store resemble pale, mealy baseballs – I just can’t be convinced to buy one.

I guess if you’ve never had a ripe tomato and you don’t know the difference, it’s understandable. Yet, once you start eating seasonally, it’s hard to go back.

In the meantime, I happened to have a poached and peeled tongue in my fridge.  Fortunately, the new and improved BLTA – bacon, lettuce, tongue and avocado – is still a crowd-pleaser.

The missing tomato?

It’s not like they don’t have tomatoes in the store. So why not run out and grab one?

In Eating on the Wild Side, Jo Robinson explains the nuances.

First, to avoid damaging them in transport, tomatoes are now picked green and shipped to regional warehouses.  Here, they are ripened with ethylene gas and distributed locally.

Unfortunately, “force-ripened tomatoes.. are less sweet and more acidic than tomatoes that ripen under the sun. The aroma… is… gone.”  Robinson notes that “they never attain the flavor or health benefits of tomatoes that are plucked at the peak of ripeness.”

Eating seasonally and organic produce

Second, it’s hard to find organic this time of year.

Robinson provides a litany of strange-sounding chemicals that are routinely sprayed on tomatoes – herbicides, insecticides, and plant growth regulators.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) confirms this.  They measures pesticide residue on produce and publish annual lists of the most pesticide-laden produce (as well as the least).  Tomatoes show up year after year on their ‘Dirty Dozen‘ list.

As a general rule of thumb, if you can’t find reasonably-priced organic produce, whatever you are looking for is probably not in season.  Too much money for too little value.

The summer BLTTA

So, yes, this sandwich could be improved with tomato and I’ll be sure to add one in summer – the BLTTA.

When grown to ripeness in sunlight, tomatoes produce lycopene to protect their skin from UV rays.  And believe it or not, this antioxidant can do the same for thing for us! Wilhelm et al summarizes in the Journal of Nutrition,

The data demonstrate that it is feasible to achieve protection against UV light-induced [sunburn] by ingestion of a commonly consumed dietary source of lycopene.

Seasonal tomatoes make a smart addition to our mid-summer diet.

Smaller, dark red tomatoes have the highest nutrient content. Also, since tomatoes are technically berries(!), their sugars don’t raise our blood sugar very quickly.  Like other berries, they are low-glycemic.

Finally, cooking tomatoes actually increases their lycopene content.  If you do need a winter tomato, canned tomatoes are a good choice.

The BLTA – bacon, lettuce, tongue and avocado – sandwich

But for now, I’ll stick with my new and improved BLTA.

Tongue should be salted, boiled and peeled in advance.  (Instructions are here.) Once it’s prepared, you can cool it in it’s broth and leave for a couple of days in your fridge. At this point, it will take about 10 minutes to throw together your sandwiches.  The broth can always be saved for adding to soup or cooking rice.

Meanwhile, Jessica Prentice sums up my tomato omission well in her book Full Moon Feast.

After years of eating seasonally, I find that I no longer have any interest in summer foods during the wintertime. Knowing there will be delicious and beautiful tomatoes galore come August, I hold that expectation in private delight. It feeds my hunger for connection, my deep desire to be in touch with the planet and its cycles and phases, the profound intelligence that is at work in the universe. A tomato on my table this time of year would be disconcerting and out of place. Life would feel out of whack, disrupted, disturbed. Eating a tomato in February would be like opening your Christmas presents at Thanksgiving. It would spoil the fun and kill the anticipation.

Alas, I’m not perfect.  I couldn’t go without the avocado…  😉