A Year of Blogging: August 10, 2011

August 10 was 'National S'mores Day'. For my international readers who may not know what a S'more is, let me explain. It's a popular treat to enjoy around a campfire. You'll need graham crackers, a chocolate bar, and marshmallows (not the miniature ones). Roast the marshmallow over the campfire. Make a 'sandwich' using a graham cracker, a piece of chocolate, the toasted marshmallow, and another graham cracker on top. The heat from the marshmallow helps to melt the chocolate. I found conflicting reports about whether this dessert was created by the Campfire Girls or the Girl Scouts. At any rate, people were sitting around a campfire and must have had these ingredients handy, so they put them together. It has inspired a lot of copycat desserts- people try to fancy it up to make it a dessert worthy of a five star restaurant, rather than something to enjoy by the campfire. What happens though, if you can't eat graham crackers? I am not able to eat them. So I roast the marshmallows on a metal skewer over the grill after we have cooked dinner. Sure, it's not an open fire burning wood, but it's a charcoal grill so it's close. Then I break the chocolate bar (a Hershey bar to be exact) into pieces, and stick one piece into each hot marshmallow. I still get to enjoy the marshmallow and chocolate, and can skip the part which makes me sick. I never eat too many though- it gets a little too sicky sweet after just a couple. When we were children, marshmallows were stuck on the end of a stick, and you held the stick over the fire. As an adult, and a bit of a germaphobe, I prefer the more sterile metal skewer. Some people, like my mother, like to catch their marshmallows on fire, then blow them out. This makes the marshmallow very toasty on the outside. It also of course turns it black. Some people barely get the marshmallow warm. I am somewhere in the middle: I don't like it to catch fire, but I do like it to get a little brown. When I slide the marshmallow off the skewer, the inside kind of separates from the outside because the inside has liquefied. Then it's perfect. And as so often happens, now I could go for some s'mores. We don't have any Hershey bars in the house. Which is a problem- in more ways than just the inability to make S'mores.