Raisin toast: A love story.

I know what you’re thinking: “C’mon, Holly, you really don’t have anything better to write about than TOAST?!” And I say, don’t you worry about THAT! If you know me at all, you should see all the crap I’ve got on my list to write about, but I had to interject here and talk about the gloriousness that is raisin toast.

Why? Well, for starters, I am well on my way to finishing an entire loaf of the stuff. Last Friday, I stopped at Whole Foods on my way home from work. I was on a mission to get Ramen (follow me on SnapChat @OrangeJulius7 to see all of my Ramen missions), and of course, I wandered over to the bakery section.

You see, on the weekends, I like to have “special” breakfasts. They aren’t really anything special, but I always make sure I have something in the house other than my Monday-Friday breakfasts of yogurt, a protein shake, or a piece of fruit. On the weekends, I like to have eggs or bacon or biscuits (or all three), and I like to savor it while sitting on my couch with my coffee. I’ve pretty much done this since college.

So, I came across this pretty loaf of organic raisin bread at Whole Foods, and I was really looking forward to putting a few slices in my toaster and biting into a piece of bread that offers a pleasurable juxtaposition of crunchy and soft; savory and sweet, all at once.

Do I sound like Oprah right now, raving about bread?

Saturday morning, I did just that. I toasted two pieces of the raisin toast and I put a little bit of orange preserves on them. And it was delicious.

You know that scene at the end of “Ratatouille”, when Anton Ego comes to the restaurant and asks for something from the chef, and it’s a dish of ratatouille – typically a peasant dish, and he takes a bite, he closes his eyes, and his world is completely ROCKED?

Yes, well, I’m not going to lie and say raisin toast rocked my world; I don’t have much going for me, but I’ll at least give myself more credit and say I’ve got things happening that are better than toast here. But, my carb-loaded breakfast choice definitely brought me back.

As a kid, it was a real treat to go to Hardee’s and get the raisin biscuits. Remember those? They were basically cinnamon rolls and they had a little bit of icing on them. If I waited until I got home to eat them, the icing was slightly hardened, and that was the SHIT.

And in college, my then-boyfriend always had a loaf of Pepperidge Farm cinnamon raisin bread in his kitchen. If I stayed the night, he would “make us” some the next morning – meaning, he would toast it and put it on plates. He would also walk to the end of his brick path in purple Crocs to get the paper. What can I say? I was a fool in love.

I worked about two blocks from his house, so if time permitted, he would make me lunch on the weekdays. Lunch meant deli meat on white bread with mustard, and  a side of Doritos. It was not my number one lunch choice, but I always liked it because he made it.

When I think about it, a lot of men in my life have served me bread. And hell, bread is delicious, filling, and affordable, and it doesn’t affect men’s bodies the way it often does a woman’s. So, bread for all!

If I’m being honest here, it’s been a bit of a shitty week. And in weeks like these, I latch on to anything that keeps me from jumping off my second-story balcony. Be it a cold bottle of tequila, a bloom on my magnolia bush sitting on my crappy patio, a loaf of raisin bread, or a few simple memories full of ignorant bliss.

Tomorrow is Friday, and that means two things: I’ve survived another week of spreadsheets, and there’s a few good breakfasts on the horizon.