And The Moral Of The Story Is...

For those of you who are not aware, I am a big fan of seasonal food. Growing up, my mother always cooked seasonally - before it was a "thing". We never had peaches in January - because they weren't in season. When I began working in catering sales the menus I wrote were always seasonal. It never occurred to me to serve asparagus in October.

That said, honestly there are times when you think you'll perish if you can't have what your brain craves and your heart desires. Or perhaps it's an impulse buy as it was the day I saw green tomatoes at Meijer. Desire got the best of me and I brought them home. (I know) Mom used to make fried green tomatoes and as is often the way with mom-specialties, mine never taste the same. Regardless, I still try to make mine taste like hers and dip them in a  50/50 combo of flour and cornmeal along with salt and pepper. I didn't have any coarse cornmeal, which is preferable for this, so I had to use a fine grind.

Then I fry them in a fair amount of oil. I used canola. Those below were flipped to early and I am sure were flipped again. To be really tasty they need to be really golden brown. Mom would never have made such a rookie mistake.

Working with what I had, I decided to make a basil mayonnaise. The basil is overcoming the garden and after using a lot of it, I will still need to make a huge batch of pesto at least twice before the end of the season. Lucky me!

I finely hand chopped the basil, then stirred it into a good quality mayonnaise or, even better, homemade.

I fried up some thick cut apple wood smoked bacon, cut some fresh arugula from the garden and made Green Tomato BLT's on a whole grain sandwich bread. Delicious, right?

Well....the flavors were wonderful together but the tomatoes didn't have that tangy "green" flavor that makes me love them. There's a surprise. I absolutely look forward to making this wonderful sandwich again but I'll wait for green tomatoes from my own garden still warm from the sun.

And the moral of the story? Do as I say, not as I do. Don't buy stuff when it's really not in season. Make this sandwich but wait until you can get your hands on "real" green tomatoes.