On Toast

Or: The Edible Life Raft

Some mornings, when I am awakened by the sound of my alarm or my grumbling stomach, I do what millions of others do--  I crawl out of bed, head for the kitchen, and make toast.

I was going to say that I make it  without thinking, but that would be untrue, since I do not own any appliance specifically designed to do the thinking for me in terms of heating and browning bread. I do without these appliances because they are a luxury I cannot afford in terms of counter space.

So I make my toast in the oven. There is a certain amount of thought that must go into the process, but nothing so mentally taxing it would send me back to bed.

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I crank my oven up to broil and place two pieces of bread on the middle rack to let them dry out a bit as I wait for my tea kettle to boil. Just before the kettle has a chance to express itself, I remove the slices from the oven and place them under the broiler to brown. It is a fairly straightforward process on most days. Unless I am either too tired or too distracted to be properly watchful, in which case not even dental records could prove that the charred remains at the bottom of my broiler ever bore the name bread.

If my toasting mission has been a successful one, I will pour my tea or coffee and slather my freshly-carbonized breakfast with whatever is most handy. I eat it absentmindedly as I sit and read the news.

If ever a thought of mine was given to toast beyond its making, it has been merely to wonder what should be placed upon it: butter, cheese, marmalade, bacon, tomatoes. I have always regarded my toast as a platform upon which to place other, more interesting things.

And, though I sometimes take my toast with jam, I almost always take it for granted. That is, until a friend of mine caused me to look at the stuff in a different light