Last night I had a hankering for some toast – just some plain toast with a smear of vegemite. Down I went into the kitchen and put the bread in the toaster and waited for what seemed like ages. Impatient, and sure that the toast must be ready I pressed the cancel button and up it popped. It wasn’t even golden. I took one slice out and buttered it and re-set the toaster for the other slice. Not wanting to burn it I pressed the cancel button after a short while only to find again it hadn’t toasted enough. I like my toast darkish and crunchy. Oh well, I couldn’t be bothered waiting any longer – it seemed that the more sophisticated the toaster the longer it takes to toast.
Strangely, what I found unsatisfactory about my toast was that it didn’t have that wonderful ‘toast’ smell, the almost burnt but retrieved just in time smell. When I was a kid we had one of those manual toasters with doors that you opened on each side and an element in the middle. You had to turn the toast over to toast it on both sides. The bakerlite handles would usually get very hot so it was an exercise in trying to not burn the toast or your fingers. But of course five times out of ten the toast would be burnt. And then scraped into the sink. You simply retrieved what you could. Burnt toast is what I grew up with. Everyone was usually either too impatient or too busy to stand at the toaster, constantly opening the door and checking. And to check you had to ensure that the toast came away from the element (hence another reason for burnt fingers and warnings of not sticking knives into the toaster). These days you can’t make burnt toast: the smoke alarm in the kitchen goes off way before your toast is truly burnt, plus of course all the settings on toasters mean that (potentially) you have the perfectly coloured toast of your choice.
I also discovered that vegemite is no longer the same. I very rarely eat the stuff but always have a small jar (and I mean the smallest one you can buy) in the cupboard – usually for my kids. The last jar I bought was a couple of years out of date but still two-thirds full. Doubting that the stuff could really go off I nevertheless threw it away and bought some more. I discovered that vegemite now comes in squeeze tubes. I was sceptical about this but thought it would probably solve the going off problem. Disappointingly, it doesn’t taste at all like vegemite used to.
My walk down memory lane brought back memories of kerosene heaters in the kitchen and the kettle that would sit on top and the hot water bottles that would be filled from the the kettle. And our fridge with its tiny little freezer compartment. I don’t remember it containing anything except those aluminium trays of ice that had a mechanism that twisted the metal divisions of the tray so that the ice could come out, and ice cream – first in rather lovely decorated tins and later in cardboard packs. I still remember shelling peas so there weren’t any packets of frozen peas in the freezer. Actually the freezer probably couldn’t fit anything else except the ice cream and all the built up ice that meant the defrosting of it was a regular job we had to do. And no doubt accounts for my dislike of cleaning out the fridge. Thank god we don’t have venetian blinds any more – that was another awfully tedious holiday job. But more of that later.
I’ll leave you with thoughts of ‘snap crackly and pop’, ‘choco loco’ and Kraft spreadable cheese. Of course we did get more sophisticated in the ’70s and learnt how to make everyone’s favourite party offering: French Onion dip (combining a packet of cream cheese with a packet of dried instant French Onion soup mix). How times have changed.
tania j layden 