He Should Have Eaten the Bacon – Wedge Salad

My father’s friends Art and John had very different personalities. Art was a mild-mannered middle school math teacher and John was an ornery, drinking Quaker. Despite their differences in personality, they were the best of friends.

Art feared death. He hated flying and was very careful about what he ate. When he visited the street cart for lunch outside the school where he taught in downtown Philadelphia, the rumor was that he would order a hot dog with mustard, relish, and sauerkraut – but hold the hot dog. He wouldn’t eat anything that might hasten his demise.

John, on the other hand, lived life to the fullest. He once threw himself a party with the express purpose of having more oysters than he or any guest could eat. Apparently, there were A LOT of oysters, with some left over. John was also an educator, a headmaster of a small Quaker school. As I started my career I called to inquire about a teaching job and he bellowed on the other end of the line about how great it would be to have a Strieb working in his school. Unfortunately, the job never worked out.

From time to time, Art, John, and my parents, along with other friends, would go on some sort of retreat together. They would talk and play cards and probably drink scotch or something, and the next morning they would get breakfast. John would always eat lots of bacon. Art, not so much. It’s not that he didn’t like bacon, but what’s going to kill you faster than salty, fatty, nitrate-laden bacon, after all? John chided Art, encouraging him to relax and enjoy the food, but Art would not relent.

In the early summer of 1996, my wife and I had recently moved back to Long Island. On a clear, peaceful July evening as the sun went down, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff, a mile or two off Long Island’s South Shore. It was a red eye flight from JFK to Paris.

In the last remaining light of day, locals went out in their boats on the calm ocean to see how they could help. Of course there was nothing they could do. There were headlines and updates in the newspaper every day for weeks. I had recently finished my studies, and my wife was still in graduate school for Oceanography, and her advisor, a physical oceanographer by training, was consulted to help predict – based on the ocean currents – where debris and worse might wash up on Long Island’s beautiful, sandy beaches.

It wasn’t until later that we learned Art and his wife Joan, who were going to visit their daughter living abroad in Paris, were aboard TWA Flight 800.

The way my father tells it, while mourning his dear friend Art’s untimely passing, John, who didn’t let life’s pleasures pass him by, murmured the words “he should have eaten the bacon.”

For years I took my high school marine science class on a field trip to Fire Island National Seashore. We would study the beach and dunes, and use seine nets to catch fish in eelgrass in the bay on the back side of the barrier island. Once we came upon a dead whale that had washed up onto the ocean beach. About a half mile down the beach from our field trip site, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean, lies a memorial to those who passed that July evening on TWA Flight 800. A brief visit to the memorial was the last stop on our field trip every year. I always shared Art and Joan’s story with my students as I touched their names etched into the cold, black granite. And I always thought “he should have eaten the bacon.”

Wedge Salad

I wonder what my father’s friends thought about a wedge salad. It’s a salad, with lettuce and tomatoes…so that’s healthy. Since the bacon is crumbled into small pieces, it allows the diner to eat as much or little as they want. I would wager that John would have complained there wasn’t enough bacon, while Art would have pushed all but a few specks to the side. John probably would have taken Art’s extra bacon right off his plate.

Most wedge salads are made with a hunk of crunchy, ice cold, iceberg lettuce cut from the head like a slice of pie. Once or twice a year I serve it this way. When I have fresh small heads of romaine lettuce ready to pick in the spring garden, they make a perfect, although not traditional, wedge salad, and an excellent dish in a Saturday night small plates menu.

Wedge salad is typically composed of lettuce, tomato, bacon, and blue cheese, topped with blue cheese dressing. Welcome additions could include chopped chives, croutons, or nuts. Add grilled chicken, pieces of ripe avocado, paper thin slices of red onion, and a hard-boiled egg, and you have a Cobb salad. It’s a salad, after all; add whatever you want.

Serves 4, about 30 minutes

For the blue cheese dressing:

¾ cup mayonnaise

3 oz. blue cheese, crumbled

⅓ cups plain yogurt

2 Tbsp. half and half

½ tsp. fresh ground black pepper

½ tsp. kosher salt

½ tsp. Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp. tabasco sauce

For the salad:

1 head cold iceberg lettuce or 2 small heads romaine lettuce

4 slices thick-sliced bacon, cooked and crumbled

About 20 cherry or grape tomatoes, cut in half, or 2 red, ripe tomatoes, cut in bite-size pieces

1 cup crumbled blue cheese

1. Make the dressing. Combine and whisk together all dressing ingredients in a small bowl. Taste and adjust seasonings. If it is too thick, add more half and half or water, a tablespoon at a time until you reach a thick but pourable consistency. The dressing will be lumpy with chunks of blue cheese.
2. Cut the head of iceberg into four wedges, removing any tough stem or center core. If using romaine, cut in half or quarters, as appropriate, and remove the stem and core. Wash and dry, and keep in the refrigerator until ready to assemble.
3. Assemble the salad by topping the lettuce with bacon, tomatoes, crumbled blue cheese, and one quarter of the dressing, along with any other optional topping you like.

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