A certain amount of intelligence is embedded in things and the accompanying phenomena. I was introduced to this idea in one of my college philosophy courses. Maybe it was from Russell and Whitehead's Principia. For instance a material so dumb as a brick, imparts a certain amount of information upon the floor it falls upon. So why can't a jellied piece of toast have something to say to us.
You can learn more about it in New York Times Magazine column on the subject.
I found the following in Henry David Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Unfortunately many things have been omitted which should have been recorded in our journal, for though we made it a rule to set down all our experiences therein, yet such a resolution is very hard to keep, for the important experience rarely allows us to remember such obligations, and so indifferent things get recorded, while that is frequently neglected. It is not easy to write in a journal what interests us at any time, because to write is not what interests us.