To invest in a toaster oven…or not? After 16 years of marriage, a choice had to be made. To clarify, our toaster hadn’t been married for 16 years. Matt and I had been married for 16 years. We had been given the beloved toaster as a wedding gift. It lasted for precisely 16 years, four children, and 5,702 pieces of toast. Then, it decided to retire and its heating coils failed to ever turn orange again.

Thus we found ourselves faced with this very difficult decision about whether we should simply buy another regular toaster, or if we should invest in a nice toaster oven. This ranked right up there with other decisions we have faced over the years like, “should we purchase a house?” and “should we home school our offspring?”.

Okay, totally not really. Not even close.

But we did have to figure out how, pray tell, we were going to make toast. Grim reality hits when you’re standing in the kitchen with your butter knife and jelly, and you are suddenly faced with absolute toastlessness. Emotions can run amok.

Okay, totally not really. Not even close.

In actuality, our family doesn’t really even eat very much toast anymore. But shucks, wasn’t it fun to picture my husband and me standing sadly with our un-toasted bread in the kitchen, heads bent over in deep contemplation, as together, we looked through toaster catalogs?

We finally did decided to go ahead and purchase a toaster oven to replace our regular ol’ toaster. Because we no longer use a microwave, we have found our toaster oven to be a wonderful addition to our kitchen for warming up leftovers quickly. In addition, we chose a toaster oven that was big enough to bake a small pan of brownies or cookies, bake a small pizza, or warm up several burritos at once. We use it all the time and absolutely love it. I would not want to go back to regular toaster now that I’ve experienced how great and versitile a toaster oven is.

Many of you have asked which toaster oven we have and recommend. Well, it would appear that the toaster oven we own, a Euro-Pro Convection 6-Slice Toast R Oven, is no longer available at Amazon (which is where we purchased it a year ago). It seems that the Oster 6-Slice Convection Toaster Oven is comparable to what we purchased, and if I needed to buy one for my family at this point, that is likely what I would choose.

So how about you? Do you use a toaster or a toaster oven? If you have a toaster oven, in what ways do you use it?

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention it and in case you were wondering, our toaster oven does also make toast. Yes indeed. We are no longer toastless.