Sunday Food Thread: The Battle of the Sexes & Toaster Ovens

Are you pro-toaster oven or anti-toaster oven? I only recently learned that there seems to be a fault line when it comes to toaster ovens – guys love them and women don’t understand them.

A toaster oven, along with one favorite skillet, are the kitchen items I use the most, pretty much on a daily basis. When my wife and I were married about two decades ago and started setting up house together, there were many negotiations discussions and compromises to be made. One of these was allocation of the real estate atop the kitchen counter. I had three non-negotiable must-haves because I use them every day – a coffee pot, a coffee grinder, and a toaster oven. She felt that this was probably one item too many, but because she loved me, she acquiesced.

But my wife to this day is still puzzled by the toaster oven – she lovingly calls it my “easy bake oven” – and she rarely uses it.

At a recent gathering I found myself chatting with four couples – our ages ranged from early 30s to late 50s – and the topic of toaster ovens somehow came up. For every couple, the guys were passionate about toaster ovens and the women had little use for them. In fact, like my wife, they were genuinely puzzled about the guys’ passion about toaster ovens. One of these women also called her husband’s toaster oven an “easy bake oven.”

Every woman expressed these sentiments about toaster ovens, all valid points:

- They’re clunky and take up valuable counter space.
- They’re redundant, there’s already an oven in the kitchen. (One of the women stated, “We have a double oven built into the wall and he refuses to use either one of them!”)
- A regular toaster could be used for toasting, then it could easily be put back in the cupboard.
- Why are guys using a toaster oven to re-heat food when there’s a built-in microwave?
- The microwave also takes a fraction of the time to re-heat food compared to a toaster oven.

Every single guy countered with these points:

- Toaster ovens heat up in a fraction of the time of regular ovens.
- Toaster ovens use less energy than regular ovens ($$$) and they dump less heat into the kitchen that must then be cooled by the air conditioner. Again, less energy used.
- Food re-heated in the toaster oven is far superior to food re-heated in the microwave.
- There is food for which you’ll use a toaster oven that you wouldn’t use the big oven (for instance a couple slices of garlic bread, or one salmon fillet, etc.)

Is this small sample of couples representative of the greater population? Please tell me that some of you ladies like toaster ovens as much as we guys do.

Also, open Food Thread. Maple syrup may be used with French Toast today.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 04:00 PM

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