Dr. Toast’s Amazing World of Toast

(From the New York Times Sunday magazine)

The first electric toaster appeared in 1909. It toasted one side at a time and required constant vigilance: when the toast was done, you pulled the plug. The first automatic electric toaster was designed in 1919 by Charles Strite, a man sick and tired of burned toast. Americans were skeptical at first about investing in a single-function appliance, but prices dropped and — such is the allure of toasted bread — sales mushroomed. From 1922 to 1930 sales tripled, from 400,000 units to 1,200,000, thanks in part to the introduction of sliced bread by Wonder. Toasters now live in 88 percent of American homes; the tiny chrome hearth on the counter may well be the one object that pleases most of the people most of the time.

by Johnny Insipid
touchmythingy@hotmail.com

HELLO, AND WELCOME,

As a member of Toastmasters International I shall speak to you a speech. On toast. And of it’s mysteries.

My speech begins as thus:

People will fear the many things they do not understand. Some do not understand war or perhaps the beauty seen from a really good height. Some fear spiders. For others, of too great a number, it is toast.

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by Vanessa Jones
Academic Psychiatry
Imperial College School of Medicine (St.Mary’s)

Here is a way of making toast that is also a race:

ingredients:
bread
marge/butter
marmite
processed cheese slices

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by Bob Condor
Chicago Tribune

TOAST has its fans on the Internet. You can find dozens of sites dedicated to the morning comfort food. Here are some of the highlights from the Toast Resources site, http://dsp.com/tritone/toastlinks.html (ed. note: moved to http://www.drtoast.com)

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Celebrating the invention and perfection of one of life’s truly golden pleasures

by Bob Condor
Chicago Tribune

THE EVERYDAY slice of toast is not without its celebrity interludes. As Sir John Falstaff calls for more drinks at a high point of frivolity in Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” he yells after the server, “Don’t forget the toast!” Falstaff was asking for the cube of hot buttered toast traditionally tossed into warm drinks in the heyday of the Bard, leading to the use of the word “toast” as a way to celebrate life’s most important moments.

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by Alan Burdick
New York Times

Not long ago I was given a toaster as a gift. For years I lived without one. Toasting, it seemed to me, was a sham: in goes the pre-sliced slip of machine-molded white bread, and out pops a pretense of royalty, an impostor to the throne of cakes and jam and tea. The toaster — invented, I’d always thought, expressly to facilitate this sorry masquerade — was to blame.

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Cats and Buttered Toast. What would happen if a slice of buttered toast were strapped to the back of a cat? One always lands feet-down and one always lands butter-down, right?

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Strawberry Pop-Tart Blowtorches. A classic. Demonstration of the horror that ensues when a toaster malfunctions and doesn’t eject the Pop-Tart in time.

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The Toast Bible: “On the second day, God created condiments. The butters, jellies, jams, marmalades, syrups and other wonderful toppings to enhance the taste of toast (as if it needed it..)”

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The Shrine to Toast, Complete with 8 toasters, 20 kinds of bread, and every condiment imaginable. Guaranteed to make a believer out of you.

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