Making Toast

I know it’s silly and pointless and a waste of time and wasteful in general and blah blah blah. I know these things, I’m only ridiculed seemingly constantly for my passion. But I can’t help it. For generations we did these incredible, impermanent works of art, art a person can experience and now people look at it as something not worth the dirt caked on their shoes. My great grandmother taught me one day how to make a simple piece of toast and I was hooked. 

I love to cook. 

Humanity seems to dwell on progress and efficiency. Never is anything good enough for us. And when people began working longer, harder hours, they found even less time to do things they legitimately enjoyed, and were forced to instead find ways to make more money as effectively as possible. Starting with food. Food is essentially obsolete now, and all the nutrients a person could ever need are kept neatly packaged in a twice daily pill. These pills have done wonders for society in that obesity has significantly decreased, production rates have increased, and pharmaceutical companies are able to line their already thick pockets with more cash because they can set the price for these nutrition pills to whatever they want. This is because produce is literally nonexistent unless you have the good fortune of finding something wild growing, or you have your own garden like I do. Now, meat is completely out of the question. I haven’t had meat since my eighth birthday. But there’s always some sort of fashion or skincare fad going on so I can normally find things like honey, eggs, and even some spices if I look hard enough. 

I’ve been forced to learn old techniques like hand cranking pasta, making bread from scratch, and figuring out how to fix ancient kitchen equipment like the blender I got from the antique shop last weekend. But I love it all. It adds meaning to my otherwise mundane life. 

Because my produce is so precious and so limited, I have to schedule a strict cooking time. I like to do Tuesdays. My only cooked meal is on Tuesday, and though it may be simple like bread and jelly, at least I can feel it. At least I feel full rather than just energized. That’s another thing, since the creation of these pills, people are just perfectly ok with hunger now. They may feel hungry but their brain tells them they are full simply because of the pill. Some folks genuinely look like skeletons now and it is concerning. Not that many people care. Sure I’ve found some other chefs and cooks online in groups, but nearly all of them are rich, famous, or cook for the rich and famous. Cooking is one of those funny things like day drinking or thrift shopping. It is seen as cool and trendy when done by people who can afford to do it, but trashy when done by people who can’t afford anything else. Cooking is taboo, and I’m one of the lucky few who don’t mind a little spinach in their teeth every now and then. For me it is a sign of self sufficiency and my way of rebelling. It’s my way of saying “hey, you may control everyone, but some people haven’t given up. I am here.” 

I digress. I eat two real meals on Tuesdays because Tuesdays just seem forever long and have no real meaning. Monday you at least feel rested from the weekend. Tuesdays? No. Tuesdays are forever from the next day off and that’s the kind of day that you just need a boost on. 

I sincerely encourage everyone to just try a carrot. Eat some lettuce. Try a spoonful of honey. It will genuinely change your life. We have been stripped away of so much already, can we not even have the simple joy of a sweet tooth anymore? Or barbecues or birthday cake. Can we no longer enjoy a lunch break, regardless of if you actually choose to eat lunch anymore. 

In the current world the answer may be no, but I think if we worked to rebuild community gardens, bring back farmers, pull out the old dusty cookbooks from a time where people could bond over recipes, then maybe, just maybe, we could find our way out of this dystopian hell maze. 

If people could stop ridiculing me when I tell them I’m growing strawberries. If people were able to feel like they could have time to themselves outside of their day off. If there were ever a time when people could realize that we are humans, not machines, then we could find greatness in the human race once again. 

There is no point to life if we cannot relish in simple victories like chocolate chip cookies. Cooking may be my outlet, my passion, my joie de vivre, but I understand it is not everyone’s. We have become too modern. And of course, I wish everyone would relearn their own great grandmother’s toast recipe like I did, but just hobbies in general. We are destined for greater things than what is found in our factories and paychecks. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. In that same sense, I can go on and on about my philosophy of the system and the encouraged ridicule of passion to detract from the fact that no one enjoys life anymore, but I cannot make you want change. That is up to you. 

When did we go from man, woman, and child, to workers and glorified work mules. My dying hill is nutritional pills. But I have spoken to others who miss libraries. I have spoken to others who yearn for windows in their workplace. We have truly become not a society, but cogs in a grand machine. And we are not well oiled. It is high time we make a change. Those who are with me, fire up your ovens. We have some cooking to do.