Food Friday: We are Toast

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about! I listened to a report about the perils of toast and potato chips this week. The plummy BBC accents did not make the reality any less harsh. There are new threats lurking in our kitchens, thanks to our fondness for the exceptional versatility and deliciousness of bread and potatoes. Toast and fries are a menace!

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38680622

Acrylamides, the combination of water, sugar, and amino acids which are the very things that make bread toasty and tasty, are created when bread is heated in the toaster. They are what cause the browning of the surface of the bread, and make the delicious odor that wafts up from the toaster into your waiting nostrils. The essence of the the comfort we deride from toast is what is going to kill us all. Just when we need lots of hot sugary cups of tea, and plates of warm, buttery toast.

So long, toast. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/09/how-to-eat-toast

Toast is the gateway ingredient for many other delicious meals. I remember my mother bringing me a trays of cinnamon toast when I was lying on the sofa, recovering from the mumps. Nothing more delicious had ever slid down that sore throat. And cinnamon toast was the first recipe I ever managed on my own. (The next was my famous peanut butter and potato chip sandwich, a classic combination of sweet and salty, soft and crunchy.) https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cinnamon-Toast

If you can’t have toast, you can’t have grilled cheese: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017326-grilled-cheese-sandwich Grilled cheese is the basis for many a child’s sense of independence. One feels such autonomy when trusted to cook a grilled cheese unsupervised for the first time. From there it is a short hop, skip and jump to re-heating frozen pizza in the Toast-R-Oven.

Nor can you enjoy a grilled egg and cheese sandwich the Dan Pashman way: https://www.sporkful.com/watch-grilled-egg-and-cheese-the-sporkful-way/. And nothing delightful and unexpected as this grilled cheese and kimchi sami: https://www.pbs.org/food/fresh-tastes/kimchi-grilled-cheese/ Ciao.

You won’t be able to consume French toast with abandon: https://food52.com/recipes/4622-weekend-french-toast. So long to using up that stale bread and getting to drown your hungover Sunday in sweet lashings of maple syrup.

Say bye-bye to my favorite lunch, the BLT. https://www.food.com/recipe/classic-blt-sandwich-129615 And I cannot even begin to wonder what role acrylamides play in making bacon crispy and delish. Here is a more sophisticated and complex recipe, in case you ever get tired of the purity of a basic BLT: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/ultimate-blt

When I feel like I have to order something for lunch that makes me exude worldliness, I will often order a club sandwich. Not any more, I suppose. I will be getting by with suggestions from the water sommelier. (I kid you not: https://www.eater.com/2013/8/6/6390275/la-restaurant-has-45-page-water-menu-water-sommelier) How very depressing. Thank you Pioneer Woman for this very gussied up club sandwich: https://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/killer-club-sandwich/

While you are at it, you might as well whisper, “adieu” to the Croque Monsieur and the Croque Madame: https://www.marthastewart.com/334699/croque-monsieur

Say farewell to the best part of Caesar Salad, the crouton. Sigh. I fry ours in bacon fat, so I guess I am killing us off twice as fast.

And that’s the swan song for French Onion Soup, too. Frankly, the dripping browned cheese and the crouton are my favorite part of onion soup. That and trying politely to wrest a mouthful of melted cheese-draped bread out of the soup bowl without bringing shame to my family. https://juliachildsrecipes.com/soup/julia-childs-french-onion-soup/

And toodle-oo to cocktail parties! No more witty banter while trying to appear poised enough to be a John Cheever character, as I successfully navigate the crowded room, a highball clasped in one manicured hand, the other winkling out a delicious toast point, coated with egg and a smidge of caviar. https://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/ToastPoints.htm

It is the end of our happy times. Godspeed.

“It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. ”
― Nigel Slater