Some women love diamonds and furs.  I love toast.  Gazing at my breakfast plate, the golden brown crumbs all that remain of my morning toast fix, my spirit sinks, like packing on the last day of a good vacation that has come to an end. I’ve consumed my first installment of what is sure to be a toast filled day. Each day begins gleefully with the anticipation of two slices of what can only be characterized as innocuous sliced bread, being transformed into that golden brown bit of home cooked goodness.  You know you have a serious toast habit when you stare longingly at a loaf of bread right before bedtime, and look forward to the dawn of a new day. Like a moth to the flame, my heart and stomach are drawn near with the expectation of my morning toast ritual, complete with a hot cup of what I affectionately refer to as, “Northwood’s nectar”, coffee.  Make no mistake, the beverage is not the star here, but rather the crusty, crunchy bread now transformed by little heating elements into that beloved of all foods, toast.  The remaining crumbs strewn across my plate as though ravaged by storm, remind me of their delicious beginning, and I am left to wonder about my obsession with “toastus torrere” as the Romans called it. What confluence of events alighted to cause such a profound hunger and deep affection for this foodstuff?  My heart doesn’t belong to Daddy, as the old song would imply, but to bread transformed, morphed into something much more beautiful.

Speaking of the Romans, some history would be in order.  Darkened bread, wine, and the possibility of getting poisoned at a banquet, are intertwined in antiquity, although seemingly unrelated.  Sifting through numerous and completely unsubstantiated histories of toast, it would seem that it began with the Greeks actually.  Serving wine laced with poison at dinner gatherings and banquets was a method of eliminating an enemy.  The dinner host would pour and drink the wine and when he didn’t croak, the attendees held aloft glasses as a salute to friendship.  The Romans commandeered the practice of toasting to good health, fortune, and friendship.  Ingeniously, as only a people with such a storied culinary history can, the Italians would add chunks of burned bread to their wine as a way of sweetening it, reducing the acidity, and making it more palatable.

Toast is more than a staple of my diet, it’s a trusted friend. Toast informs my life in various incarnations such as medicinal toast when you’re sick, or afternoon snack toast when you come home from work and put the coffee pot on.  How about late night snack toast, when a meal would be too heavy?  Recreational toast is the best kind, just because you want it and nothing else will do.  That buttery crunch calling you into communion, toast is my routine. Weekend morning toast is especially sublime. My morning routine varies little between the work a day world and the longed-for weekend respite, the latter allowing more time to luxuriate over my Sunday New York Times, a piping hot cup of coffee, and my beloved toast. My Monday through Friday coffee is dripped through an ease of convenience electric coffee maker, utilitarian in every way.  On the weekends I bring out the percolator, the Farberware brew pot that transforms ground coffee and boiling water into the nectar that accompanies my morning toast.

The antecedent to my toast habit (at least two generations old) my mother’s mother, Gram as we used to call her, lived with us for most of my childhood.  She was the toast maven, the progenitor of my toast lineage.  Gram always sat at the breakfast table with a Chinette cup of Tetley’s tea, and a small sandwich plate with two slices of Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Raisin toast.  Slathered in just enough sweet cream butter to make the crunch melt into a velvety mouthful of goodness, cinnamon toast and Gram at the kitchen table form an indelible image in my mind. They say that addiction can skip a generation, because I have no such memories of either parent coddling a plate of toast. My father had an unnatural affection for milk toast mind you, which seems like an oxymoron, wet and toast.  Milk toast consists of toasted bread lavishly buttered, and hot milk, or as my father’s arteries could attest, heavy cream. I remember the lightly browned toast, the silky whiteness of the heavy cream, the yellow pool of freshly melted butter, and the little black flecks of cracked pepper floating on top of this concoction, layered in a tall glass, twirls of steam rising heavenward.  This dish originated in New England, and was thought to be especially soothing and easily digestible for both little children and the infirm.  This makes perfect sense to me, as the family history tells of my father taking ill at the tender age of two, and being shipped from the big city to live with his namesake, Uncle Don, in the Adirondack Mountains.  The year was 1920, and fresh air was thought to be the cure all.  The milk toast elixir, and the crisp cleanness of the mountain air, were the palliatives that nursed my father back from the brink of a ruptured appendix, and so was born his relationship with milk toast.

Mom did show signs of the toast addictions far reaching grasp as well, as she prepared a special concoction of poached eggs and toast whenever we were home sick from school.  Toast as medicine.  She would place a dollop of butter in the little egg poaching cups, crack the eggs and gently simmer them until cooked just enough to congeal the albumin.  The toast would catapult from the our sleek Braun toaster, the result of the springing mechanism wound too tightly, much the way a cat jumps sky high when frightened. Mom would deftly catch the toast, butter it, and cut it into nice little crunchy pieces, placed in a bowl with the poached eggs.  Sprinkled lightly with a little black pepper, the toast would receive a yolky baptism as the knife and fork moved through the soft poached eggs, forming a silky breakfast that would heal both body and soul.  Medicinal toast at it’s finest.

My toast loyalties are divided, as my usual consumption includes two slices of bread transformed.  One is adorned with rich country pumpkin butter, the unmistakable junction of caramelized sugar and pumpkin, the deep amber color the result of a leisurely simmer. Thankfully pumpkin butter can be found year round, no longer just an autumn staple.  I stockpile the yummy spread with a characteristic glee of a hoarder gone wild.  The onset of global warning and drought conditions conspired to produce a pumpkin shortage that filled me with fear and trembling.  I could always fall back on that bastard child known as apple butter, but it’s so unexciting, the cousin to applesauce, and barely one-step up the culinary ladder. My toast, the product of the chemical reaction known as the Maillard Effect, transforms into a beautiful brown, and is deserving of only the finest toppings.  My other slice of toast is the waiting receptacle for that bastion of Scandinavian goodness, the lingonberry.  I don’t do jelly, jams, or preserves, but lingonberries are in a class by themselves, the rich burgundy hue an apt sidekick for my beloved toast. Sometimes I’ll have my toast straight up, no chaser, understated in all her glory, and always with soft butter, so as not to tear the surface.  Have you ever extracted a cold stick of butter from the fridge and tried to spread it on your eagerly awaiting toast, only to smear the hard little pat of butter and wind up with gapping holes in your toast? Not good.  I learned early in my toast addiction that when cold butter has it’s way with my toast, the ravage and brokenness makes me sad.  Soft butter it is.

Who doesn’t like a good piece of toast? To quote the English food writer, Nigel Slater, “It’s impossible not to love someone who makes you toast”.  Here here! I agree.  Amen.  There’s a world of toastdom out here that most people are completely unaware of, a toast society if you will.  Just Google the word “toast” and see what pops up.  The Internet has a toast culture ready for your perusal. Did you know that the Toaster Museum Foundation’s collection of toasters is housed in the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan?  That’s right.  The proliferation of toast across the airwaves, in museums, and on kitchen tables throughout our country solidifies its place in our lives and hearts.  I enjoy great toast memories and look forward to making new ones.  You can keep your diamonds and furs, because I’m having a love affair with toast.

Are you having a love affair with a food item? Perhaps you have had a recent break-up with a cherished treat.  Let us know about your special food memories in the comments section at the bottom of the site!