Bacon for branches

With hot humid summers come thunderstorms.  On Friday night we had a monster storm pass through.  Here is an eyewitness photo of our backyard:

Or maybe that's a scene from "The Day After Tomorrow."

As a result we lost a few large tree branches, but no power loss or basement flooding, so we were fortunate in that respect.

Sunday was our designated clean up day.  And it turned out that our yard needed a lot more work than I'd thought...

  Old school saw.  Tim Taylor approves.

What is this??  Apparently in the backyard landscape, an epic battle between roses and giant weeds is taking place.  Who shall be King of the Thorns? 

TGF gloves.  I give Mother Nature credit- if you're going to be a weed, making yourself sharp and pokey is a good idea. 

A car full of branches to haul to the compost dump. 

A sea of branches.

But one benefit of having storms and rain is that my vegetable garden is starting to sprout.  Here are my beans popping up. 

After a day of manual labor in the hot sun, the last thing I felt like doing was stand over a stove to cook dinner.  Sandwiches it was!  BLT's...sort of...

BLATs
8 strips uncooked bacon
4 pieces iceberg lettuce
1 tomato, sliced into 4 cross-section slices
1 avocado, cut into thin slices
8 pieces whole grain bread
4 slices cheese (optional)
4 eggs (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Place strips of bacon on foil and bake for 15 minutes.  Using a paper towel, soak up any grease, flip bacon, and bake for another 5-10 minutes, or until done.  Soak with more paper towels.

Meanwhile, toast the slices of bread.  Fill with avocado, cheese, fried egg (I had to add this since this is what my husband did, and it looked weirdly tasty), tomato, bacon, and lettuce.

Ahh, finally relaxation time...until the next hurricane storm. 

Makes 4 sandwiches.  Per sandwich: 300 calories, 19 g fat (most of it heart-healthy from the avocado), 16 g protein