Posted in Family, Personal life

Let them eat toast!

apricot and raisin toast
Image by penguincakes via Flickr

I don’t know why I am so averse to buying toasters.  But the fact is that for a number of years I’ve been eking out other people’s cast-offs, rather than invest in a new one.   As my mother progressed to a four-slice machine, we stuck with her old two-slicer.  Sprinting up and down the kitchen to reload the thing every few minutes whenever the three of us were having a toast-themed breakfast, I must have burned off enough calories to cancel out my consumption of at least the crusts.

It was not my fault that the toaster lives so far from the kettle – blame the electrician who sited the sockets in my cottage so eccentrically.  But it dawned on me eventually that promotion to a four-slice toaster would save me an awful lot of time and trouble.

I therefore declared the demise of my old white two-slice toaster and  decided to splash out (not literally – although that certainly have hastened its end).

I thought choosing its successor would be a simple task.  Surely there can only be so many variations on a theme, even in the ever-growing Argos catalogue?  But no.  There was page after page of the toaster and its cousins, with mind-boggling, unheard-of (by me) features now apparently all the rage.  A toaster that changes colour at the same speed as the bread? A little annexe in which one can simultaneously boil an egg?  Bun-warming attachment, anyone?  This decision was going to take longer than I thought.

Eventually I settled for a shiny new aluminium one which offered all sorts of extras that I didn’t know until now that I’d needed.  The bagel feature, for example, handily toasts just one side of the slice – ideal for muffins and teacakes.  The optional “reheat” button is brilliant on a school day, when my complicated early morning choreography means I’m never in the kitchen when the toast pops up. The subsequent quick blast is just enough to ensure effective butter-melting – the hallmark of a perfect slice of toast.

Before my purchase, toast in my household had become a snack of last resort, I so hated using my naff old two-slicer.  But now my microwave hardly ever gets a look-in.  When the cupboard is bare, its my multi-tasking toaster that comes to the rescue.  Hungry, are they?  Then let them eat toast!

Post-script: I still retain a strong allegiance to another small electric kitchen device eloquently referred to recently by a Malapropian relative as “The George Formby Grill”.  Now there’s a gadget to conjure with – hot food and ukelele tunes at a single stroke.  What’s not to like?

Author:

English author of warm, witty cosy mystery novels including the popular Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries and the Gemma Lamb/St Bride's School series. Novels published by Boldwood Books, all other books by Hawkesbury Press. Represented by Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agents. Founder and director of the Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival. Course tutor for Jericho Writers. UK Ambassador for the Alliance of Independent Authors. Lives and writes in her Victorian cottage in the heart of the beautiful Cotswold countryside.

One thought on “Let them eat toast!

  1. You dishearten me. I have held onto the belief that the English only eat toast cold – even passed it down to my daughter. Now I am afraid to take her traveling to see all the untruths…..

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