Simple, honest, 4-ingredient toast.

The cicadas were loud that year. Louder than any year before or since, which my brother Dale disputes, but Dale was not there for most of that summer, for reasons we will get to in Chapter 4 and then again, in more detail, in Chapter 6.

I was nine. Our kitchen had yellow linoleum with a burn mark shaped like Ohio, and every morning my grandmother, Nana Bev, stood at the counter in her housecoat and made toast. Not fancy toast. Honest toast. The kind of toast you could trust with your secrets.

I did not know then that I would one day share that toast with millions of strangers on the internet. I just knew it was warm, and that the kitchen smelled like Tuesday. Every day smelled like Tuesday in that kitchen. Nana Bev never explained this.

The window over the sink faced east, so the morning sun came in low and gold and landed right on the bread box. I have tried to recreate that light in every kitchen I have rented since. You cannot buy it. I have tried. I have a receipt for a lamp that says otherwise, and the lamp was lying.

Nana Bev would take one slice of bread from the box, look at it for a long moment, and say, “Well.” That was all. Just “Well.” I have spent my whole life trying to understand what she meant, and I think, finally, after three cookbooks and a podcast, I do. I will tell you in Chapter 5.

I know what you are thinking. Marjorie, toast? You wrote eight chapters about toast? And the answer is yes, because this toast deserves it, and because the ads do not load themselves. Well, they do. But they need somewhere to load.