We ate like Gods

Here’s the virginal sacrifice. 

Weighing in at exactly 1 pound.  It’s our first beefsteak tomato of the season. The variety is called Mortgage Lifter.  If you’re interested in how it got its name here’s a quote from here.  There is more to the story at the link.

Sometime during the early 1940's, Radiator Charlie decided that he wanted to develop a very large tomato, so he set about trying to locate the largest tomatoes that he could find. He soon located four varieties of very large tomatoes: German Johnson Pink, Red Beefsteak, an unknown Italian variety and an unknown English variety. From these, he grew ten plants which he cultivated in a very unorthodox, very unique fashion. He planted nine of the plants in a circle and then planted a German Johnson Pink in the center of the circle. Byles then cross pollinated the German Johnson's flowers with pollen from each of the nine plants in the circle and saved seed from the resulting tomatoes. The next year, he planted the seeds and selected the best seedlings. The very best of these again went to the center of a circle, while the remaining were planted in a circle around them. Again, the plants in the middle were hand pollinated with pollen from those in the circle. Byles repeated this process for the next six years until he had created a stable variety that met his needs. After that, he never had another type of tomato on his place. The resulting variety became known as the Radiator Charlie's Tomato and soon established themselves as being very desirable. Every spring, gardeners from as far away as 200 miles came to buy their tomato seedlings from Radiator Charlie, which he sold for one dollar each, which was a substantial amount of money for a tomato plant back then. Mr. Byles sold so many tomato plants of his new variety over the next five or six years that the profits of his tomato enterprise paid off the $6000 mortgage on his home!

I wouldn’t take this story as gospel  as I’ve seen it vary and some times outright disputed at other sites. But it sure sounds good, doesn’t it?

For the sacrifice this will be our alter.  Toasted Jewish rye covered in peanut butter and bacon.  Does any one else find it ironic to have bacon on Jewish rye?  I guess I never claimed that this was a kosher event.

Yes, you read that correctly.  There is peanut butter in this sandwich.  No lettuce.  If we wanted a BLT we’d make one but this sandwich is a Peanut Butter-Tomato-(Bacon) Sandwich.  I should point out that bacon isn’t required to make this sandwich.  It’s delish with or without the porky goodness. Don’t forget to sprinkle salt and pepper on it to bring out the tomato flavours. Hmm-Hmm good.

Here is the end result.  If you feel a little queasy at the idea of combining tomato and peanut butter look at Indonesian food.  Some dishes combine peanuts and tomatoes and are quite delicious.  If that doesn’t persuade you to give this a go, how about a double dog dare? Post feedback if you’re brave enough to try this sandwich out.