It pops up, like a guest at a surprise birthday party, more golden than the minute before: a miraculous tanning bed (a tanning bread, if you will). What a transformation to behold, a previously soft and monotonous slice becomes a delightfully crunchy sliver of joy. And this very sliver of joy is only the beginning – it is the foundation for greater things. This column is a tribute to the wonder that is toast.

(In a gloriously serendipitous fashion, I’m actually writing this on National Toast Day. Talk about destiny!)

As I have mentioned in a previous column, there is no better feeling than remembering the existence of toast. This may seem like a silly statement to some, but the toaster is an often-forgotten kitchen appliance, nestled in between the microwave and the hob, rarely given the spotlight it needs or deserves.

However, it is not its unassuming demeanour that means it is often forgotten. I would argue that it is the fact that to toast you need bread, and to have bread – as a student – you must either know that you are capable of eating the quantity of bread in a loaf before it goes out of date (a real feat), or have some miraculous sharing system with your housemates. So, there are some big variables at play in the whole toast situation.

“If you were to attribute a political agenda to each kitchen appliance, the toaster is unequivocally communist: it places everyone at the same level”

But then there is even more at stake. Once toasted, what does one put on the toast? Toast and butter go together like nothing else: the butter melts to create a celestial golden palette, a feast for both the eyes and the palate. Some people shun this simplicity and add jam or Marmite to up the flavour stakes. For the chocolate-obsessed there is Nutella and its various spread offshoots – like Speculoos paste (often known as biscuit spread) or custard cream paste (!?) – meaning you can make your toast taste like anything, from a Ferrero Rocher to a common garden biscuit.

The savoury stakes have become increasingly high in recent years, with avocado stepping up (and on) to the plate. Known in some places as ‘avo toast’ and in other, more aggressive establishments as ‘smashed avocado’, it has become a somewhat cult classic. Who would have thought that toast and vegetables would go down such a stormer? Not I, not I. 

The wonderful thing about toast is that every man, woman, non-binary person and child are the same when it comes to the toaster. Whether you’ve spent a year at the Cordon Bleu or you’ve not quite worked out how to cook pasta, you can make toast. If you were to attribute a political agenda to each kitchen appliance, the toaster is unequivocally communist: it places everyone at the same level. (Please do share any other kitchen appliance political stances that occur to you.)

This egalitarian effect of the toaster is ultimately the real impetus for this article. You may have thought that this was just a good old-fashioned article about bread, but oh no. Bread is only the beginning. From bread, we have moved to toast and from toast we have moved to politics, and from politics we now – hold your hats! – move onto gender.

So, as we have established, everyone can toast things – no specialism is needed – and much the same can be said about cereal. Everyone can cereal (just to clarify – choose cereal, put in bowl, add milk and eat with spoon). The toaster and the boxed grain both came into being at the turn of the century, and into more common use in the early decades of the twentieth century.

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan equates cooking with the systematic oppression of women. With well-established gender roles and the ongoing ‘make me a sandwich, woman’, rhetoric within popular culture (even if meant in a comic sense), it is impossible not to notice that gender and food are very much interrelated.

Traditionally, women did take this domestic role, preparing meals, cleaning the home and bringing up children, and as a consequence, women were heavily associated with the home and with food. Therefore, although it’s only a small pip in the large lemon of women’s emancipation, the introduction of ‘ready-made’ breakfasts, such as cereal, and the invention of toasters allowed women to go out and work, without the responsibility of cooking for their family or husband in the morning.

I read something recently that said: “a woman’s place is in the kitchen. A man’s place is in the kitchen. The kitchen is where the food is.” And, whether you like my interpretation or not, the fact that anyone can pop some bread in the toaster, or whack some cereal and milk into a bowl, has made the kitchen a common space and has had an inherently liberating effect on women.

The Cereal Offender: Yay-stry or Nay-stry? Let’s chat about pastry

So what’s more effective, the soap box or the cereal box? Almost certainly the former, but it’s nice to know that cereal and toast are here to help. So here, I raise my glass in a toast to cereal, but more importantly, to toast. It brings such joy; it has the power to turn a starchy square into something miraculous, to make a kitchen smell amazing and to help us ladies out. So, thank you toast, for all the great work you do.

N.B. In Parks and Recreation, Ron Swanson states, “there has never been a sadness that can’t be solved by breakfast food.” This is a philosophy to carry with you, throughout your lives, whatever they may be.

The Cereal Box: Special K

Now that we’ve set the whole gender ball rolling, the cereal this week is Special K. The Yorkie (the chocolate bar variety) of the cereal world, while not as explicit as the Yorkie bar's ‘it’s not for girls!’, there is certainly a ‘no boys allowed!’ aspect to this cereal.

Through Kellogg's advertising campaigns, it has been drummed into us all that this is the cereal for a woman who looks good in red, with an imminent holiday to a tropical beach resort or an inexplicably gleaming white house.

Although I must admit that red is a good colour on me, neither of the subsequent conditions apply, so I, up to this point, have not dared to buy myself a pack of Special K, for fear that upon swallowing one spoonful, I would find myself – all of a sudden – in a red halter-neck swimsuit. But for the good of the column, I shall take the risk.

It turns out that this is just a cereal, not a magically transformative combination of grains, much to my surprise (and disappointment). It is, however, quite a decent cereal. I wanted to try as much of what Special K offers as possible, so went for one of the new varieties with the classic flake, a revolutionary cluster, a handful of nuts and a sprinkle of dark chocolate. It was nice.

The flakes were like the ones in Fruit ’n‘ Fibre, the clusters like a less sugary version of the Crunchy Nut variety, and the extra nutty bits were good too. It’s not a cereal that will break any boundaries or start any revolutions, but it’s alright, perhaps erring on the cardboard side, but hey ho.

One of my friends said it was her ‘favourite’, which took me by surprise as I thought she was a woman of refined and excellent taste. However, she did state that she was mainly a fan of the red fruits one, so I’ll take her word for it and assume that the dried fruits have a pretty extraordinary effect