BLTs, leaves, and blue cheese dressing

Andy is wild about BLTs.  There is no other way to write it.  When tomatoes are in season I don't have to do much cooking because there is always bacon in the fridge and tomatoes at the ready. (Maybe not as many this year but still enough to please Andy.) Any way you cook bacon it makes a mess.  The oven is the least intrusive. However, for some reason some of the flavor is  missing. Well, there is bacon in the oven this morning, the tomatoes are sliced, the toast is in the toaster, the fresh basil leaves are plucked, and the mayo is ready to spread...it's BLTs this Saturday lunch.

Already Andy is grinding up the leaves with the mulcher.  The leaves are dropping really early this year and that is sad to see.  I do get sad in the autumn for some strange reason. I shouldn't there is so much to look forward to such as another great-grandaughter, a trip to Italy and a trip to visit Beth's family for Thanksgiving in New Orleans. (My motto is do all you can while you can.)

I have been making and testing some really tasty salad dressings.  I made a good one with blue cheese, lots of blue cheese because usually, the blue cheese is sparse in the ready-made dressings.

From an old August post:

I had a former student who grew up to become an HER realtor. She kindly sent me the HER cookbooks each year and the recipes are just fabulous. Today, while I was looking for a recipe for peanut butter pie with streusel for a requester from Cook's Corner I ran into a recipe that I had requested on Cook's Corner many years ago. While I did not find the peanut butter pie recipe, I grabbed the cherry-pecan loaf recipe to try today! Someone told me about this but would not give me the recipe, so now I am about to try it. It uses buttermilk and maraschino cherries. If it is good, I will add the recipe to this entry.

CHERRY-PECAN LOAF: (I MADE IT AND IT IS GOOD!)
This is from the HER holiday cookbook from many, many years ago.
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs (I use jumbo)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all- purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup chopped pecans
1-10 ounce jar maraschino cherries drained and chopped (If I were doing it again, I would use more cherries.)
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 tsp. vanilla
milk to drizzling consistency. Drizzle over cooled loaf.

In large mixing bowl cream together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy. In medium mixing bowl stir together flour, soda and salt. Alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk to creamed mixture, beating just until blended after each addition. Fold in nuts and cherries. Pour batter into greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for 55 to 60 minutes depending on your oven. Let stand10 minutes before removing from pan. Cool and drizzle if you like.