The Joy of Eating Cinnamon Toast as an Adult

You're on Earth for a good time, not a long time.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Prop Styling by Beatrice Chastka, Food Styling by Pearl Jones

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Recently, I did a thing that's unthinkable for any adult human with no children. I bought a package of cinnamon raisin bread.

Was it at least whole grain? you wonder. No. In fact, it was a loaf of Pepperidge Farm cinnamon raisin bread. The kind that tastes like a giant sponge of sugar and preservatives, with maybe a little bit of flour and yeast thrown in for kicks.

For the next week or two, I threw slices of this bread into the mix of my usual breakfast rotation–which usually includes healthy things like sweet potato bowls, oatmeal, and jammy eggs with a Wasa cracker. I toasted it, slathered on a truly unsavory amount of (salted—and that's crucial, folks) butter, and sprinkled a mixture of cinnamon and sugar over the top, just like my mom used to do. (My mom had a special turquoise container with a pink band around the lid that was full of cinnamon sugar for dusting on toast. I assume that an elf from the forest behind our house refilled it at night, because there was always cinnamon sugar in the canister, despite the fact that I never saw her fill it.) My favorite part—I remembered, suddenly, from childhood—was when the cinnamon sugar sort of melted into the butter in places, making shiny pools among the dry desert surface of cinnamon sugar coating. (No, I was not high when I was consuming the toast. But fair question.)

Eating the cinnamon toast felt like chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes while teetering on the edge of a rock formation that opened onto an empty abyss. It felt free.

So I kept going. Confessing my cinnamon toast consumption shamefully to coworkers, I was met with encouragement, and even suggestions for upping the ante. My boss told me to eat the cinnamon toast with hard cheese like Manchego on top. Game changer. I tried a Christina Tosi trick of making cinnamon toast with browned butter. This is so delicious it basically shouldn't be allowed to exist. Once, instead of sugar, I tried using creamy raw honey and cinnamon. It felt like a warm, sticky hug.

Eating a slice of bread with sugar and butter on top is bad for you. It has zero nutritional value. Our Paleolithic ancestors wouldn't be caught near it. And so it would be dishonest to pretend that, during the Great Cinnamon Toast Experiment of 2018, I didn't have thoughts of every better, stronger-willed person I've ever known who has forsaken carbohydrates; by the keto diet; by thoughts of the evils of sugar in absolutely any form.

But with every bite, I pushed those thoughts aside. Because eating cinnamon toast for breakfast was pure, unadulterated happiness. I may not have been setting myself off on anything close to the right nutritional foot, but from a vibes standpoint, I'd never felt better. I'm here for a good time, not a long time, I reminded myself while wiping butter from the corners of my mouth.

Not that I always want to eat like a child. I appreciate the sophisticated palate I've gained as an adult. I love deeply savory anchovies and beautifully bitter, crunchy radicchio; I genuinely enjoy eating lots of vegetables. But these things aren't cinnamon toast. They do not comfort me to my core. So I refuse to forsake it. I endorse cinnamon toast. Life's short; live, laugh, love; you only YOLO once; your body isn't a temple, it's a playground; notice the little things (like the shiny pools of butter-soaked cinnamon sugar on the surface of your toast)...whatever platitude you need to hear to make this feel okay, say it out loud to yourself. Or wake up and give yourself a simple directive: Eat the toast. Just eat the damn toast.