Simple Pleasures: The perfectly toasted toast.

Look at that toast. It's perfect. It's perfectly toasted. Not too dark, not too white. That's a skill, and it's a simple pleasure. Riding that line between sucking all the moisture out of a perfectly good piece of bread (key ingredient in toast) into the black hole of crustiness and being too white to technically be toasted. When toast comes out perfect it brings a smile to my face, a very simple pleasure. If you don't get it right there's not going back. You have to start over again. Perfect toast means I can get on with my day.

So I raise a glass, a toast if you will, to toast.

Toast is also a great word. It's fun to say. Toast.

Blues Brothers is perfectly underplayed movie and one of my favorite tiny jokes in the movie is Elwood's obsession with toast. He's always got bread on him and while purchasing the instruments from Ray Charles he seeks out a toaster to make some toast. In the diner he orders toast in opposition to Jake's four fried chicken. "How often's the train go by?" "So often you won't even notice" is delivered while Elwood prepares toast on a bunsen burner.

Toast.