This is a bit on toasters.. and a tangent too. Elke had a post about pictures w/toasters and it inspired me to relate a bad toaster decision of my own. When I moved to california in ’99, I moved in with 2 other guys in a small apartment with no toaster. This seemed OK at the time b/c I didn’t work regular hours, therefore wouldn’t need a toaster for quick breakfasts.

Flash forward a couple years to just before I got married. My lovely wife-to-be Kelly and I were discussing what we should put on our wedding registration. Kelly mentions a toaster, and I, in a flash of not-so-much-now-but-sounded-good-at-the-time-brilliance said something to the effect of “We should get a toaster OVEN so we can make toast, and other toastable things, as well as any other mini-oven related tasks that might crop up.” She is skeptical, given that my mini-oven task list hovers just south of zero, and I haven’t toasted anything in several years (though, to be fair, I hadn’t had toaster-access in several years.). With some fast talking and my effective tools of persuasion, I convince her that a toaster oven is the way to go. So we got a toaster oven.

Now, gentle reader, I must beg a small query from you. Have you ever actually tried to make toast *in* a toaster oven? If not, please let me explain. The word ‘Toaster’ in “Toaster Oven” in no way means that this confounded contraption is in any way usable to make toast.. Let me say that again so that there is no misunderstanding: A toaster oven is incapable of making toast. Oh, to be sure, there are a lot of things that a toaster oven can produce, including funny smells, burnt fingers, blisters, melted candles, melted pill-bottles and swearing. But when you’re in a hurry, and want a simple piece of toast, you are definitely out of luck.

The sad, or should I say sick issue is that the company continues to perpetuate this massive hoax on the consumer by including such things as a ‘light/dark’ knob (which has no discernable effect, and upon taking apart the toaster oven in a fit of rage, is apparently not even connected to anything. It also includes a ‘timer’ which, if perhaps I was using a variable time-frame relative to the star movement on riegel-4 might be relevant, but has absolutely no bearing on actual earth-time, despite the fact that it is helpfully labeled in minutes. It supposedly comes with an automatic toast timer and shutoff to produce “the perfect piece of toast” (actual quote from the literature.) Which does not actually produce toast, but instead will happily produce lumps of bread-shaped charcoal.

So finally, last month, I gave up my quest for mastery of toast, toastable items and mini-oven features rolled into a convenient package and put the toaster oven out in the yard sale for $0.25. I hope that it’s evil will pass from my house and leave me in peace. My wife went out and bought a simple toaster that you place the bread in and press a lever. when the toast is done, it pops up, and eagerly awaits it’s next step (usually down my gullet, often coated in fruit preserves).

It also makes bagels.

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