Market leading (@ yr 2000) CD-ROM creation software for the Mac OS, published by Adaptec. The latest OEM versions, which are everywhere, support either SCSI or USB drives but not both, and restrict disk formats to HFS only. Toast Pro supports the wide range of formats and all current bus technologies.

...and, consequently, the name of a Chicago restaurant with a huge plastic piece of illuminated toasted bread spinning outside its front door. This is one of many in a like-minded theme of trendy, cute little slightly overpriced breakfast restaurants that serve really good food. Others like it are the Bongo Room, Kaliedoscope and Spice.

All of these have basically the same limitted menu of great entrees, providing a few choices from each of your basic breakfast realms: pancakes/french toast, delectible egg dishes, healthy granola type stuff and a few Mexican huevos burritos concoctions.

Although our Bucktown friends seem to love Toast and recommend it constantly, Mike and I, who consider ourselves great conosseurs (sp?) of the Chicago dining scene, disagree.

While the potatoes at Toast are exquisite and dishes like the 'pancake orgy' (3 different kinds of cool fruity combination pancakes topped with yogurt, granola and honey) make for interesting choices, we much prefer the other restaurants in this category that I listed above.

The ambience at Toast is kind of cramped and cell-like (and I mean the jail variety, not the biological type.) While the teeny tables are overcrowded with fru-fru items like strangely packaged brown sugar and 7 kinds of marmalade, the staff look at you like you're nuts if you request age-old standard condiments like ketchup or tabasco sauce.

There is always a long wait if you go in with more than 2 people and their eggs florentine leave alot to be desired. And, if I wanted a place to go nuts with chorizo I would eat at Hollywood Grill.
Toast can also be a synonym for 'done'. Not just along the lines of bread or even food in general, but for people as well. For instance, jocks have often been heard informing the opposite team that they are 'toast' before a big game.
Possibly the best example of this usage is in the classic original Ghostbusters, in which Venkman (Bill Murray) determinedly exclaims "This chick is Toast!!!!" after being zapped with lightning (a-la 80's special effects) by a hell woman with spiked hair (a-la 80's style).
A toast is a drink in honor of something or someone. It derives from customs of drinking which go back to at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier (medieval writer Geoffrey of Monmouth attributes the custom of two people drinking to each other's health from the same goblet to Saxon leaders who came to England in the 400s). Wishing someone health and happiness with a drink was an important public expression of loyalty to them in England, and later its colonies, but it did not gain the name of a toast until around 1700, due to the habit of placing toasted bread in wine or beer to improve the flavor.

One story goes that at a health resort in Bath, England, sometime in the late 17th century during the reign of Charles II, a beautiful woman was in the water with a group of admirers hanging around, and one of them took a cup of the water she was in and drank to her health. Another man joked that he would rather have the woman than the water; "liked not the liquor, but would have the toast." This story may be apocryphal, but the word "toast" for either the drink or a woman who is being drunk to (as in "the toast of the town") appears in the Oxford English Dictionary around 1700.

Doing toasts in England at that time also involved some awkwardness if the person being toasted was present. Maureen Waller's 1700 quotes a French visitor as saying English custom had two requirements of the toastee:

  1. The first is, that the person whose health is drunk, if an inferior or even equal, must remain still as a statue while the drinker is drinking...when you would drink a man's health, you should first keep your eye upon him for a moment, and give him time, if possible, to swallow his mouthful, that you may not reduce him to the perplexing and uneasy necessity of putting a sudden stop to his mill, and so sitting a good while with his mouth cramm'd with a huge load of victuals...
  2. After which, the second grimace is to make him a low bow, to the great hazard of dipping your peruke in your sauce.

Sources:
Barr, Andrew. Drink: A Social History of America. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999.
Waller, Maureen. 1700: Scenes from London Life. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000.
http://dictionary.oed.com
http://www.bartleby.com/81/16585.html
http://www.pineconeresearch.com/Newsletter/Archives/0012/nutshell.htm
http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/corner06.html

Toast is created by lightly browning bread slices, either using a contraption known as a toaster, or by burning it slightly on a fire source.

Toast can be served with various toppings (including the student classics "beans on toast", "cheese on toast" or "cheese on beans on toast"), but is particularly nice with a thin layer of butter or margarine on one side.

When placing toast on a plate, however, it is best to place it butter-side down, as the moisture from the centre of the bread will cause the underside to become moist and unpleasant.

Toast is recommended for those with sore throats and those who have just had their tonsils removed.

toad = T = toaster

toast 1. n.

Any completely inoperable system or component, esp. one that has just crashed and burned: "Uh, oh ... I think the serial board is toast." 2. vt. To cause a system to crash accidentally, especially in a manner that requires manual rebooting. "Rick just toasted the firewall machine again." Compare fried.

--Jargon File, autonoded by rescdsk.

toast

A health ; also a beautiful woman whose health is often drank by men. The origin of this term (as it is said) was this: a beautiful lady bathing in a cold bath, one of her admirers out of gallantry drank some of the water: whereupon another of her lovers observed, he never drank in the morning, but he would kiss the toast, and immediately saluted the lady.

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.

My toast has flown from my hand
And my toast has gone to the moon.
But when I saw it on television,
Planting our flag on Halley's comet,
More still did I want to eat it.

Poetry from a Ruby tutorial

In Nigerian English, toasting is when a guy is wooing a girl. This is done by talking to the girl and getting her to talk with you, hang out with you, and generally agreeing to be your girlfriend.

Girls also sometimes toast boys, although they are not as forward. Normally, she just lets you know she likes you and you are supposed to take it from there.

Toast (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Toasted (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Toasting.] [OF. toster to roast, toast, fr. L. torrere, tostum, to parch, roast. See Torrid.]

1.

To dry and brown by the heat of a fire; as, to toast bread.

2.

To warm thoroughly; as, to toast the feet.

3.

To name when a health is proposed to be drunk; to drink to the health, or in honor, of; as, to toast a lady.

 

© Webster 1913.


Toast, n. [OF. toste, or tost'ee, toasted bread. See Toast, v.]

1.

Bread dried and browned before a fire, usually in slices; also, a kind of food prepared by putting slices of toasted bread into milk, gravy, etc.

<-- now usu. prepared in an electrical toaster. See toaster. -->

My sober evening let the tankard bless, With toast embrowned, and fragrant nutmeg fraught. T. Warton.

2.

A lady in honor of whom persons or a company are invited to drink; -- so called because toasts were formerly put into the liquor, as a great delicacy.

It now came to the time of Mr. Jones to give a toast . . . who could not refrain from mentioning his dear Sophia. Fielding.

3.

Hence, any person, especially a person of distinction, in honor of whom a health is drunk; hence, also, anything so commemorated; a sentiment, as "The land we live in," "The day we celebrate," etc.

Toast rack, a small rack or stand for a table, having partitions for holding slices of dry toast.

 

© Webster 1913.

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