Toast and Tea

Many times I'll come home and not want a big meal. It maybe that I'm not up to preparing something, but mostly, it will be because I want nothing heavy, substantial or complex. I want simple comfort.

Growing up, a snack before bedtime, or an enjoyable breakfast could be as easy as toast and tea. Not just any toast and not just any tea. Else, it wouldn't be the same comforting meal. It was Orange Pekoe (yes, ordinary, nothing extravagant) with milk and sugar, and white sliced buttered bread. It easily puts me at ease. Who needs sleeping pills when you have this.

Nowadays, I skip the white bread. I don't eat the stuff. Instead, I have a wonderful bakery down the street. I get a loaf of grain bread, freshly baked on the weekends, and if you store it properly, it keeps for the week. And no butter in my house (I'll get into that later); I use margarine. But the tea remains the same, and I can drink cuploads of it. And I no longer dip the toast in the tea, giving it just the right amount of moisture and eating it before it gets soggy. I let that rest with my childhood.

Ask anyone from the West Indies, and they will know of toast and tea. We're a series of colonies - we grew up on tea. Brew a fresh pot. Cut a thick slick of fresh and fragrant bread. Slather on butter (or my case, margarine). It's the ingredients that do it. Its the expectation of 'that' tea, and 'that' toast, that make the dish what it is to me - a sedative on a plate (and in a cup).