My subject today is toast, which is much on my mind right now, a buttery ticker tape that calls me constantly to the kitchen. Our boiler has packed up, the new one won’t be installed for a week, and though it’s only the central heating that’s down (the cooker’s fine), the freezing cold has turned me into a toast monster. It’s all I want, a feeling I haven’t had since I was a student and living in a house that was so badly insulated, we sometimes had to break the ice on the water in the loo. How many loaves can a person get through in a week? Come back to me in a few days for an answer. I’ll give you a tour of my chilblains at the same time.

What is amazing about toast is the way it has lately become so pimped. This started a few years ago: I first noticed it in Moro Easy by Sam and Sam Clark, a cookbook that came out in 2022 and whose opening chapter is devoted to the matter (toast with pepper, anchovy and chopped egg; toast with chorizo, tomato and chilli; toast with crab, oloroso sherry and alioli). The Clarks’ book came out of the lockdown, so this fixation made a lot of sense; these were recipes born of enclosure and experimentation. But since then, it has become a thing. Go to a certain kind of restaurant, and something-on-toast is a dead cert as a starter.

Toast is always hard to resist, especially if it’s smeared with garlic and piled with cockles and bacon, but I also feel a bit wary when I see it on a menu. (What’s the mark-up on a slice of bread? Can’t I do this at home?) But most restaurants are playing it pretty straight, I would say. It’s on the domestic front that the situation is getting out of hand, the range of outré spreads that are available to smear on your slice having grown exponentially since 2020. Last year, to take just one example, the Pollen Bakery croissant butter, which costs £10 a jar, went viral, and now you must join a waiting list if you want to get your hands on it. (In case you’re wondering, it’s made from flakes of caramelised pastry that are whipped into butter with toasted white chocolate.)

I have flirted with these spreads. After visiting the London Library the other day, I slid into Fortnum & Mason to pick up, and then to put down, a jar of Mada Mada’s famed pistachio and rose praliné (£8.99 for 170g); I do like the sound of Milk’s whipped halva and pumpkin seed tahini (£5.80 for 200ml), which is also supposed to be good on toast (I associate halva strongly with my Middle East childhood, so it has a Proustian quality for me). So far, though, I’m not sold enough to buy. I understand that in hard times like these, people adjust their concept of what constitutes a treat; that we may over-splash madly on the occasional foodstuff because we’re spending as little as is humanly possible on everything else. But I also fear buyer’s remorse. Is there a more guilt-inducing sight than a jar, opened but used only once, at the back of the fridge or cupboard? A tin of good anchovies will probably do just as well.

Or jam, of course. As I write, I’m working my way through the jars of homemade jam that have been given to me by friends over several years, and it’s proving to be the sweetest magical mystery tour, these talented preservers sometimes being identifiable only by their handwriting. Who made the sublime fig jam I’m about to finish, a conserve whose deep, plum colour Farrow & Ball should replicate immediately? (Stone Fruit – perfect in a bathroom.) And what about the peach jam that was last week’s project? What golden nectar!

I loved the way it slid companionably into the holes in toasted baguette, dripping on to the plate below to await a judicious finger. I fear I’ll never taste its like again; when I took the empty jar from the dishwasher, I had to take a moment to say goodbye. I may indeed be a horribly greedy toast monster, but I’m also a very grateful one, every last bite a contemplative way-station on the long, cold road to boiling hot radiators.