Burnt Toast

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Teri Hatcher. Burnt Toast

Burnt Toast. Teri Hatcher

Table of Contents

Introduction Burnt Toast

Chickening Out

It’s Your Caviar, You Can Do What You Want with It

Place on Rack and Let Cool

Sour Grapes Can Make a Fine Wine

I’m Too Fried

Recipe for Disaster

It’s Pretty, Let’s Eat It

Once Burnt, Twice Shy

Dare to Compare Apples and Oranges

Will Work for Pie

Afterword: Happy Enchilada

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

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To Emerson, whose birth was the sole source of my personal evolution over the last seven years. Thank you for giving my life meaning. I will try not to eat as much burnt toast as my mom did—and maybe you won’t eat any ever.

And to my mother, for doing her best and for giving me material to write a book.

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We all had adjoining rooms in the inn, and each room had a terrace and a hot tub. It was pretty decadent. Lucky for me the coupons were like the game show prizes I’d always dreamed of winning as a child. And you only turn forty once. The day of my birthday, we took a long walk up a quiet Napa road dotted with wineries. We talked and laughed and whenever my girlfriends saw a winery with the proprietor’s name on it they threatened to knock on the door and set me up with him. (“How does ‘Teri Hatcher Gallo’ sound?” Ha ha.) Later that night, tired from the sun and the wine, I climbed into my hot tub for a soak. I lounged there, naked, lazy, and middle-aged. (Ugh. Did I just say that word? Please God, say it isn’t so.) If I looked either way I could catch glimpses of my friends – one stepping out to hang a towel on her balcony, another sitting with a book and a glass of wine, a third crawling into her own hot tub. I closed my eyes, sank low in the steamy water, and let myself float. I was so content. I felt happy and complete. It was a great moment.

Then I started thinking. I was forty years old. Landmark birthdays are the perfect time to reflect on where you are and whether you have the life you want. (They’re also a good time to buy people lottery tickets, which I like to give as birthday presents. Big birthdays deserve big hope. So forty lottery tickets stuffed into a fabulous purse or vase or jewelry box can be fun.) Forty is a loud reminder that time is always running out. You’re halfway home. You’re on the way down. Sure, when I’m sixty I’ll say I had no idea what a spring chicken I was at forty. But I remember when my parents turned forty and how old I thought they were. I may not feel old inside, but I’m definitely the twelve-year-old me’s definition of old. I’m biologically more or less halfway to death. It’s true and it’s no fun at all.

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