a toast to you

Welcome to the Toast Post. A post about toast. The All-Toast Post!

I am going to give you a recipe for toast.

Silly, I realize. But also not silly, for two reasons. One, my friend Laura M. asked me to. If she asked you, believe me you would also write a short essay about toast.

Second, a recipe for toast is a golden invitation to climb up on my soapbox for a moment. Love that. Toast is not just toast, because bread is not just bread. Bread is polar bears and 65 degree weather in New England in December, and it will be as long as we accept that it is totally normal for a person entering a natural foods store in Massachusetts, with their cloth bag and careful thinking, to buy fresh bread that was made yesterday in Colorado. I looked it up and there are two flour bins in the factory--doesn't that sound nice? I have two flour bins, too--one for white flour and one for whole wheat, just like they have. But their flour bins hold 75,000 pounds of flour each. I am sure the people who started the bakery in Colorado are nice people. Bread people usually are. But as long as we have an economy where biggering the bakery to the point of putting bread on an airplane every day is the key to a viable business plan, then bread is not bread and toast = polar bears.

OK! Going to step down now and wipe the froth from my mouth area. After some ranting, one needs the calming and civilizing effects of a good piece of toast. Cinnamon toast, in fact. If you want to make someone feel better, cinnamon toast cut in little squares or triangles is the way to go.

cinnamon toast

• a nice piece of bread (not just because of the polar bears, but because better bread makes better toast. You don't have to make the bread, but just make sure it's nice bread that isn't very tired from a flight)
• room-temperature butter (this is key; cold butter leads to stress on you and the bread)
• some honey, sucanat, maple sugar or regular sugar (about a teaspoon)
  
• some cinnamon (in a jar with a shaker top)
  

Spread the bread with an even layer of butter, getting all the way to the edges to foil the crust-haters (when the crispy cinnamon stuff goes all the way to the edges, they either have to nibble at it like chinchillas, or give in and eat the damn crust). Spread a layer of honey or sprinkle a layer of sugar on top, just as evenly, not too thickly. Now shake some cinnamon on there, as much as you like. Toast in a toaster oven (not a toaster, but you knew that--just making sure) until there is a nice degree of melty bubbling action on the bread. Cool a moment, or someone will burn their mouth.