The perfect sandwich, plus or minus

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who realize that the ideal bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich requires no embellishments and those who don't. 

I am the first kind. My husband is the second. (Yes, we are a mixed marriage.)

This is the best time of year for the perfect BLT, as our garden has started producing excellent heirloom slicing tomatoes while the lettuce hasn't entirely gone to seed. Take a few slices of homemade bread, toast 'em, slather on some real mayonnaise, stack up the sliced tomato, lettuce, and bacon, and bite. The combination of crunchiness, juiciness, saltiness, and deliciosity is unbeatable--but hey, you don't need heirloom tomatoes and homemade bread to make it good. It's possible to make a perfectly good BLT with store-bought tomatoes and Wonder Bread--and yes, even Miracle Whip. As long as you have bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes, you've got it made.

I confess that I once ate a BLT with sliced avocado added, and it was good in its own way, but it wasn't a BLT. Call it a BLT Plus, but what's the point of that? The perfect sandwich doesn't need any Plus, so anything added has to detract from its perfection.

So you can imagine how I felt this evening as I watched my husband add sliced habanero peppers and ginger-cucumber relish to his BLT. He may have enjoyed the spicy, drippy mess, but I wouldn't call it a BLT. Maybe a BLT Minus. 

But that's okay. I practice strict tolerance when it comes to sandwich preferences: he can put whatever ridiculous thing he wants on his sandwich as long as my BLT remains pristine and untouched by additional ingredients. That way we're both happy, and if I persist in believing that I'm a little bit happier--that my sandwich is more virtuous than his--at least I'm not kicking his habaneros out of the house. 

So apparently it's possible to hold strong opposing beliefs on the important topic of sandwich construction and still act like civilized human beings. There may be hope for the human race after all.