Eat Burned Toast; You'll Sing Better

Electric toasters have been in existence for less than 100 years. Yet, people have been consuming bread for the past 6,000 years, and people have been toasting bread since the time of the Romans. Toasting bread makes it crunchier and preserves it, an especially important characteristic for early civilizations. Before the advent of the electric toaster, bread was toasted over an open fire with the help of a variety of simple tools. Toasting bread does more than just preserve it, of course, it changes its nature; bread becomes sweeter, crunchier and the perfect surface on which to spread all sorts of things.The toaster represents the crest of one wave of technological innovation, it began with a huge effort to electrify the nation. Once homes were wired this created a demand for household appliances, one of which was the toaster.

The toaster pictured was Grandma Mae's toaster. Well, it was Grandpa Phil's, too when he was well. Actually, he was responsible for making sure the toast didn't burn. Toast one side, open door, turn bread around, toast side two. Then, it was spread with soft butter. Oh, can you taste that hot toast right out of the toaster unto your plate with homemade jelly? Grandpa was a great toast maker and he didn't have to get out of his chair in the kitchen; Grandma brought the toaster to the table.

After Grandpa had his stroke in 1949, the toaster was Grandma's responsiblitily. Mae was great at getting the bread INTO the toaster AND flipped BUT not side two. Her response to me about the burned on one side was, "It will make you sing better." I was a naiive kid, and I believed her. I would go straight to my bed ridden Grandfather's room, climb into his bed and sing. Poor Grandpa.

The idea of writing about the toaster came to Old Trunks this Christmas. I had written to Shirley stating: Tom is a geek about wattage. The four slice toaster we have is high wattage but it is really slow and only dries out the bread. I can actually cook sunny side up eggs faster than the toaster can do bread.

During the holidays, they were at WalMart. He was looking at toasters. But instead of just the wattage, he was looking at the number of heat coils. It is a whimpy little two slicer and the outside is too hot to handle BUT it TOASTS!!! It has lines on it where the coils are. And the bread is too tall for the cavity so the top is white. Next thing we know we will be timing it. I could blog about toasters.

As a child, we had a two slicer silver unit with a fancy W on the side. It never left the kitchen, although I know families that actually had their table close enough to a plug in to put in on the table. Mother cleaned the crumb tray after every use. WHAT? You didn't know toasters had a crumb tray?

Crunching the time to new years.

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