Hello from quarantine! How are you feeling? I’m pretty fucking freaked out, especially given that I am hanging out by my lonesome in a city 1,500 miles from home and waiting with bated breath to find out what next moves a big-city mayor best known for his Sesame Street impression might make.
Anyway, enough about that, let’s talk about some freaking toasts: The one bit of connective tissue between this and every other crisis I’ve experienced, from nausea to natural disaster, is that I eat a lot of crunchy warmed up bread. In part, this is because I’m terrible at planning meals when I’m feeling anxious, and always seem to end up with an assortment of condiments and/or random foodstuffs but no other reasonable vehicle with which to transport them into my mouth.
A toast-with-some-stuff-on-it is also just the least taxing possible “meal” a person could make if they’re, say, realizing at 4 p.m. that they’re been staring wide-eyed into the gaping maw of the internet for several hours without moving or even breathing very much. So after extensive testing over a lifetime, and a lightning-round of toast-tasting over the last week, I’m here to give you the definitive ranking of toasts:
1. Pear and goat cheese on toast
2. Egg on toast
3. Brie and plum on toast
4. Smoked Salmon and cream cheese on toast
5. Sautéed mushrooms and balsamic vinegar on toast
6. Cucumber and cream cheese on toast
7. Sautéed spinach and garlic on toast
8. Cheddar and apples on toast
9. Gravy on toast (Shit on a shingle)
10. Avocado and tomato on toast
11. Peanut butter and honey on toast
12. Avocado on toast
13. Aged meats and cheese on toast
14. Salad dressing (creamy) on toast
15. Honey and hot sauce on toast
16. Peanut butter and bananas on toast
17. Mustard (old-fashioned, grainy) on toast
18. Olive oil and a tiny bit of raw garlic on toast
19. Apples and honey on toast
20. Honey butter on toast
21. Almond butter on toast
22. Honey on toast
23. Peanut butter on toast
24. Apples and peanut butter on toast
25. Salad dressing (not creamy) on toast
26. Butter on toast
27. Aged meats on toast
28. Olive oil on toast
29. Jam and butter on toast
30. Maple syrup and butter on toast
31. Fluff on toast
32. Salsa on toast
33. Non-aged sandwich meats on toast
34. Olives on toast
35. Mustard (yellow) on toast
36. Jam on toast