After much thought and reflection, I believe I have finally hit upon the best way to acquire a new toaster.
1) Buy two dozen paczki. If you don’t know what a paczki is, then you’ve lived a life that is–in pastry-related terms–almost tragically impoverished. Go out and get yourself a jelly doughnut, eat it, and while you do so imagine that it tastes, like, at least four times more delicious than it actually does. That will give you an approximate idea of what a paczki is like. We all owe a deep, doughnutty debt to the Polish. Granted this part of the plan means that you can only get a new toaster around Fat Tuesday. You’re just going to have to deal.
2) Slice the paczki in half the long way so that you have two doughnut pastry disks with a big spot of jelly/cream cheese filling/custard in the middle of each. You may lick some of the filling off either side, but try not to overdo it, or you’ll ruin the whole thing.
3) Insert both of these into toaster and push down the lever to engage the heating elements.
4) Wait approximate 45 seconds.
5) Put out fire.
6) Extract somewhat over-toasted, very gooey remnants of paczki and eat with relish while badly burning fingers, tongue, and possibly esophagus.
7) Buy new toaster.
And before you ask, no, to my credit I have not actually done this. It’s more of a thought experiment. Or a thought disaster, however you want to look at it. But you’d get warmed paczki and a new toaster out of the deal, though. So that’d be cool.
Elf in the Pudding 