For the love of Toast

I love toast. I truly do. Is there anything better than bread and butter? Oh, wait. There is. Toasted bread and butter. I eat it at least twice a day. Too many carbs for you? Not me. I will be morbidly obese before I give up toast. I'm not real into food, but toast I can get behind. The appliances on my counter? A bread machine, and my four slice toaster. (And down at the end, the microwave.)

My toppings of choice? Well, there's just butter, of course. Then there's cinnamon sugar (with butter first, of course), honey (with butter first, of course), peanut butter (butter first still), and jelly (I always apply butter first of course). For lunch I often eat sliced cheese (on top of toast with butter) or yogurt (on top of toast with butter). Yummy! (And for those of you who are worried, I don't always use real butter. A healthy spreadable margarine will do too. But the best choice is butter, of course.) Okay, enough about how much I love it. On to my point.

Now. There is something about toast. You must butter it while it is hot. And you must eat it right after buttering. Otherwise, you've compromised it's ability to completely satisfy. And I never trust the toaster. Even if I've scientifically set the toaster, I'm always using different types of bread and so you never know when you might have to manually override the toaster and pop it up yourself. So I keep watch while it is down. Oh, the patience it takes to wait for the perfect browning. Nothing beyond a deep sepia color. Move into the chocolate browns and you've let it go too far. But don't pop it up while it's still just warm bread, you're making toast here!

Okay, I've digressed again. I could write for a while about toast. My point to all of this was that these days, I've been ruining toast. I push down my toast in the toaster and cannot wait for it. The baby is crying. Someone can't reach the light switch. Someone spills their milk. "Mom! I went poo-poo!" and so on. I think I have time to wipe a crack or locate shoes or switch out laundry while my toast is down. I abandon it. It burns. Or worse, it pops at the perfect browning but no one is there to butter it and it sits there and gets cold. Oh the tragedy.

I know one day I'll have all the time in the world to stare at my toaster and butter and eat it promptly. And that I'll wish I had children pulling on my legs asking for a piece. But for now, I just wish my little munchkins understood the sacrifice I make every day (at least twice a day) when I walk away from my toaster with my bread in the vulnerable position. But you are worth it, little ones. And you're probably the only thing to me worth burning toast for. (Don't tell them, but sometimes if I mess up my toast I offer it to one of my kids so I can start again. Hey, it's the least they can do!)