BLT Grilled Cheese (BLTGC)

I have really been enjoying all of the fresh, perfectly field ripened tomatoes a lot these days, especially in BLTs ! I guess it was pretty much inevitable that at some point I would think about combining a BLT with a grilled cheese sandwich and this BLT grilled cheese, aka the BLTGC, is the tasty results of my wild musings! The recipe pretty much just wrote itself taking the buttered bread and cheese from the grilled cheese and the bacon, lettuce and tomato from the BLT and grilling it up until the outside is golden brown and all of the cheese has melted. For the bacon you could use either strips of whole slices and for the lettuce you could go with either whole leafs or shredded and you could use either whole tomato slices or you could dice them. One trick that I learned when using green tomatoes in sandwiches is that it is good to lightly fry them in a touch of bacon grease to warm and soften them up a bit which I applied to the tomato slices in this sandwich. I was kind of hesitant about using lettuce in a warm grilled cheese sandwich but it worked like a charm without getting nasty like lettuce can when it is cooked! I have to say that this BLT grilled cheese sandwich turned out amazingly well, easily as good as if not better than either of the sandwiches that gave it birth!

Just look at all of that melted cheese!