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desperately seeking toast
By heather | March 20, 2008
A few months ago my 9-year-old, beloved toaster oven started to, shall we say, malfunction. I couldn’t believe it. All these years of making me perfect toast, and warming pizza, and melting bread bags when I would forget and leave the bread on top - and suddenly, it was over.
My mom got me that toaster oven for free from her book order points. She’s a teacher, you see, and every time your kids order books from those flyers the teachers send home, the teacher racks up points to get free stuff. And some of it is good free stuff. If I’m not mistaken, I think my parents have a camera that also came from orders of Judy Blume and Choose Your Own Adventure books.
My toaster oven…my friend.
They just don’t make toaster ovens like that anymore. This one was simple. It had nothing digital, it toasted stuff and occasionally baked if I so desired. I was never ambitious, I never asked it to roast a chicken in there (who am I kidding? I don’t know how to roast a chicken) even if the included recipe book implied that I could.
I thought replacing you would be easy.
I went to the home store to pick up an identical model. No high-falutin-technical-doodads for me, no sir.
Apparently, non high-tech toaster ovens do not exist anymore.
I got the next best thing - the cheapest model of the same brand, with dials instead of buttons - and unpacked it. Gently, I packed the old oven away in the box and sent it to a happy place.
Or, I pitched it in the garage where it will sit for all eternity along with the cabinets we ripped out two years ago, multiple bags of scooped kitty litter, old windows, and bugs.
For two weeks, my new toaster oven performed admirably, with the one drawback being an annoying ticking sound to let me know my bread was toasting. Until, it stopped toasting and continued to tick.
If I slammed the door really hard, it would kick on and get busy. But if I forgot and just heard the ticking, by the time I realized that no work was being done, i.e. toasting, someone (ahem) would be yelling for his breakfast waffle and it would still be a frozen slab of ice from the freezer lovingly sitting in the oven, all home-made like, waiting to bake.
I couldn’t return the toaster oven until I bought a new one because we are a toast-needy family and I was determined not to succumb to the realm of ginormous, shiny, $150 digital models.
I went to Target and found an even cheaper model from a brand I’d never heard of, and returned the first one.
Can you pick out the red flags in that sentence?
Eagerly, I unpacked the box and expected great things. I turned it on with nothing in it just to make sure we didn’t have the same problem with ticking and no heat. Har.
Four minutes later the smoke alarm was going off, even though it was a good TWENTY FEET AWAY from the new toaster. Rushing into the kitchen, I felt a wave of heat but no flames. The bottom of the cabinet above the toaster was hot to the touch. Mr. Toaster glowed a malicious red.
I am determined, and probably a little stupid so Mr. Cheapy-cheap Toaster is still here. His door sticks a little when you try to open and close it, but goddammit he’s HOT!
Toasting goes like this:
Attempt #1
Yes, every single time I take a bite to see if it’s edible. Answer=no. Answer to the other question you’re thinking=peanut butter.
Attempt #2
Hmmm. Still a little raw. Maybe a few more minutes.
Milk waiting thirstily for it’s companion peanut butter toast…
The end result of something akin to edible is usually obtained by hovering over the toaster watching the object inside slowly brown. And yes, this is a little like watching paint dry.
Not a day goes by without something being toasted in our house. I cannot switch to a regular toaster because occasionally I like to warm up pizza in there. And I hate it when a fat bagel gets stuck in the slot and I have to go in there with a knife and dig it out.
I need a toaster oven that is simple, and relatively inexpensive, and will stop playing these games with me. I know it exists. We just haven’t found each other.
Topics: food, technology |
March 20th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Try a GE Extra Large Capacity Toaster Oven/Broiler. It’s really good for baking a small batch of cookies too…or muffins…Doesn’t take as long to heat up like the cavernous oven. Can’t remember if ours ticks or not.
Vicki’s last blog post..She Stands!
March 20th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
You just wrote a whole post about toasters.
Most. Awesome. Blogger. EVER.
Miss’s last blog post..Hey, Hey
March 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I think our toaster oven is kin to your ticking one. We similarly had an old friend one give up the ghost, after many years of happy toasting. The new one is largely okay, but behaves erratically. Sometimes we get toast largely toasted only on one side. But I hear some people like that. (It’s a feature, not a bug…)
I hope you find the toaster oven of your dreams. And I hope the current model doesn’t set your counter on fire.
alejna’s last blog post..all my eggs in one basket
March 26th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
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