When temperatures on Monday inched past 80 degrees by early afternoon, I knew it was time to say goodbye to summer. The perfect formula for farewell awaited me in my kitchen.

A delicious farewell to summer

You know what I’m going to say, right?

It was time for the last BLT of the year.

It takes more than just good bacon, crisp lettuce, juicy tomatoes, your favorite bread and the right mayonnaise for a perfect BLT moment. You need the right ambient temperature. During the cool weeks of July and early August, I just couldn’t work up a frothy BLT jones. The weather was all wrong.

Hector of Hector's Honey had great tomatoes at last Sunday's market

But the weather was perfect for a BLT on Monday and, luckily, I had a few excellent tomatoes from Sunday’s farmers market in Sebastopol. I also just happened to have Niman Ranch bacon, Deer Tongue lettuce, half a loaf of Village Bakery Sebastopol Sourdough and a full jar of Best Foods on hand.

You may wonder why I am saying goodbye to a season that passed nearly two  months ago. When it comes to seasonal eating, there are no black and white divisions, just an endless expanse of gray–or perhaps I should say red–as one season’s harvest bleeds into the next. And sure, almost everything is available year round. But foods still taste best in their own true time and I find that is particularly true with both tomatoes and a BLT. And I love the ritualistic aspect of it, from the celebration of the season’s first BLT to the delicious adieu of the last.

Ready for the bacon

There are plenty of recipes that rely on the particular alchemy of a BLT on an earlier post. For my farewell to summer, photos tell

Goodbye, BLT. See you next year.

the story.