Beans on Toast

Rain on the window. Nothing in the fridge that amounts to a plan. The kind of evening where you stand in the kitchen for a minute, hands on the counter, and think: beans on toast. Not as a last resort. As a decision.

There are meals I've written down in the notebook that took hours, and none of them have been cooked as many times as this one. A tin of beans, good bread, real butter, an egg if you want it. It takes ten minutes from standing up to sitting down, and in that time the kitchen fills with the smell of toast and something warm on the hob and you remember that feeding yourself properly doesn't require ambition. It requires attention. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one barely needs words at all.

I won't pretend this is anything more than it is. But I will say this: a plate of beans on toast, made with care, with bread that can hold its weight and butter that's been allowed to melt properly into it, is a quietly good thing. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone, even if that someone is just you, and knowing it's exactly right for the evening. Right food, right evening. We're only making dinner.