26 seconds to heavenly toast
After 15 years of faithful service and thousands of toasting cycles, my Proctor Silex toaster died yesterday. Since a toaster is mission critical in my kitchen, I visited the Target store in Silverdale today to shop for a new one.
Surprisingly none of the toasters I saw at Target were on sale, so the lure of saving money on a marked-down item didn’t influence my purchasing decision. I ended up buying one of the Oster models, specifically the TSSTRTS2S2. The model number would be easy enough to text, but I think Oster should buy it a vowel or two.
My new toaster probably doesn’t toast any better or faster than the Kitchen Aids, Black & Deckers, and other brands Target is selling. For a medium-priced model though, it has a couple of cool features: a retractable electric cord and a digital timer (see photo). It also has a bagel button and a cycle that will thaw frozen food and then toast it. Unlike the high-end Oster models, there’s no pastry button, but that’s no big loss. Would you put pastry in a toaster?
My new toaster’s features seem more than adequate, but we are talking about a long-term commitment here. For an appliance I will use thousands of times over the next decade or two, I spent about as much time deciding which toaster to buy as I would ordering lunch at a fast-food restaurant. At least the price was right and the toaster looks sleek and functional.
The problem with kitchen toasters is that they take too long to make toast. Imagine owning a toaster that was so fast you could put the bread in after the eggs were scrambled. That’s total fantasy of course. With the Oster though, I can check the amount of time left in the toasting cycle. The digital countdown gives the illusion of faster toasting even if the rest of breakfast gets just as cold while you wait for the toast to pop up.
I’m not sure why my old toaster died. Old age I guess. All I know is that the intricate network of heating elements that toast bread and English muffins to the perfect temperature and color no longer heats up when I depress the bread lever. While my neighbor could probably figure out the cause of death, I have decided to bury my old friend without a toaster autopsy.
Gotta go. It’s time to empty the crumb tray on my new friend.
Mud Bay Blog 
Sounds great except it is not white. I am committed to white appliances in my kitchen. The trouble is they don’t all fail at once so I keep getting another white one to match the rest. Also white is getting harder and harder to find. Hear that Oster? Target? Is anyone listening?
I had a friend get married two weeks ago. She has a huge family and they play practical jokes on each other. Here brother mostly. Did I mention there are 6 girls and one boy in the family?
Anyway, the brother buys her a toaster for a wedding present and tells the rest of the family to buy them a toaster. By the time they opened presents and joined two households, they ended up with 9.
I’ll asked if she got a white one.