Monday, January 01, 2024
A TOAST - BUT NOT THE KIND YOU EXPECT
It's January 1, 2024, and, for those who can get their eyes open, a toast. No, not the one you did last night, but bread, buttered, browned.
When I was a wee lad, my mom made toast in the over, in the broiler pan. Gas range, real flames above the buttered bread.
That's the toast I grew up with.
You would butter the bread first, then arrange the slices on the rack, and slide it under the flames. Every few minutes you would open the door and pull the rack out, checking to see if the toast was "done".
Of course, "done" had different meanings to each family member, and mom wasn't always worried about whose expectations were being met.
Eventually, I achieved an age and leveled up (as they say these days in video games), to the point where I could be entrusted to oversee the making of toast.
Everybody got what I liked. Yellow and buttery in the middle, golden brown along the edges with streaks of delicious, buttered, crunchiness running to the middle in spots.
Toast was not only my first cooking experience, but, in a way, my first exposure to art. MY toast was not only functional and factual, but it was fantastic in appearance as well.
Disclaimer here; I said "buttery"... actually, mom used oleo, margarine... artificial stuff. I loved it.
My maternal grandmother lived in Atlanta, Georgia, 330 miles away from our Pensacola, Florida home. We only got to visit every other year or so, but, when we did, I was introduced to something strange... a toaster AND real butter.
Although I held my tongue, I really didn't like Grandma Blue's toast. It came out a dull, universal brown, and you smeared this pale stuff with little or no flavor on it. Still, over the years, I learned to look forward to it, because it was at Grandma's... like the steel shower from Sears in her basement.
At least at Grandma Blue's, the butter went on the toast while it was still hot from the toaster. When I went into the army, you ran the bread through a toasting machine, grabbed some butter, and hoped it would still be warm by the time you got your drink, got a seat, and settled down to eat.
But, this did not complete my toasting... New Year's or otherwise.
At a small hotel in London, they brought cold slices of toasted bread to the table in a wire rack. I would smear the cold butter on the cold toast, and it would crunch.
English people: I love England, and London was fantastic (even if I did nearly kill myself and others turning down the wrong way RIGHT in front of Buckingham Palace. Damned Americans! Anyway, take it from a southern boy from the U.S., toast should not be served cold and brown, but, most of all, it should not CRUNCH!
I miss the toast Mama used to make, but, having traveled extensively over the 3/4 of a century I've been on this earth. I've learned to take my toast where, when, and how I can get it.
I forgive all of you and that's my "toast" to you on this first day of January, 2024.
Damn. Now my coffee's cold!
Will this NEVER end?
Copyright January 1, 2024, by Donovan Baldwin
Labels: donovan baldwin, happy new year, toast
