Today’s post comes to us from Ben.

Buttering toast is hard

It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, but it is. In order to butter your toast properly, you need to get the butter on IMMEDIATELY after it comes out of the toaster so it’s still piping hot and the butter will soak into the bread. But also, when doing that, depending how soft your butter is, it will disappear before you’ve covered much of the bread and you may end up using more butter than is really healthy to use to butter your toast.

I remember my father in law being at our house. There was maybe 2 tablespoons of butter on the tray and I was getting another stick out of the fridge. He pointed out the butter on the tray and I said that wasn’t going to be enough and he had quite a fuss about that. To which his daughter pointed out if we were at their house, he would have used a lot more butter than that too.

But ever since, I’m very self-conscious about how much butter I’m using on my toast. (The whole issue of whether butter is good for you or not set aside for the moment.)

Because we don’t have AC in our house and the butter stays on the counter next to the stove, the consistency of the butter changes by season. Winter it’s nicely firm, but soft enough to spread on bread or pancakes or whatever. Summer it’s generally soft, but it might be right on the verge of melted – if not actually softened into a puddle. And trying to butter your toast with that is just a mess.

Course if you keep your butter in the fridge, well, that’s a whole nother story. And if frozen, all bets are off. Then it’s just a mess with slivers of butter and randomly spotty buttered toast.

Ever tried to soften butter in the microwave? We have the button to do 30 seconds, which I use often, because you don’t have to do the full 30.

I’ve tried just a few seconds and then roll the stick over to a new side. I’ve tried higher power and turning more… There’s a very fine line between cold, soft, and melted. A line of about 1.5 seconds.

Does your toaster toast evenly? Ours does one of the two slices fairly evenly but the second slice toasts one side but not the other. So when the first piece is done I flip the second around and toast the other side of the second piece while I butter the first. But that’s only the first two pieces of toast. If I make 2 more pieces, side Two of the second will be a little more brown. But don’t forget to turn the level down or piece One will burn.

There is a play called ‘True West’ by Sam Shepard. Part of the show involves one character breaking into homes and stealing toasters. What we see onstage is the next morning with a dozen toasters spread around the kitchen. When I worked on that production, part of the issue was toasters take a lot of power and simply having enough power to run all the toasters involved extension cords from all over the theater. Well, not to mention, finding a dozen toasters. But for several years after that, no one involved had to purchase a toaster; we just went and got another one from the props room. And it gave me a line I’ve never forgotten when another character finally says “What is this bull**** with toast!?”

Waffles or pancakes for you?