When the nights get longer in the fall and the
air gets a bit of a chill to it, it’s common to build outdoor fires. Usually
the autumn rains gave begun, so if you’re safe with that fire, where you build
it, and how you manage it, you’re fine to have a fire. And one of the things
that goes with a campfire is a s’more.
Toasting marshmallows on a stick is an age old North
American tradition that had a twist put on it with graham crackers and
chocolate bars. You toast the marshmallow and, while it’s still piping hot, you
sandwich it between graham crackers with a bit of chocolate bar on them. This
little trick is so good that you are naturally going to want some more and that
is where the name s’more came from. I didn’t think s’mores were a thing before
my lifetime because as a kid in the seventies I remember it being a new thing.
But you know how childhood memories are, and how we often think old things were
new with us. I was wrong because with a little internet research I found they
started way back in the 1920’s, so they’ve been around for about 100 years!
For me, marshmallows are too sweet and they aren’t
good anyway except in some sort of recipe, or pretty crisped over an open fire.
And I can’t really say that the name s’mores, for me, is appropriate because I
never want more than one. I like to set my graham cracker as near to the flame
as possible without burning it, place the chocolate on it so that it gets melty
while I am then toasting my marshmallow. I also want dark chocolate, not some
ordinary Hershey’s milk chocolate but that Special Dark chocolate. I want the
whole thing to be sticky, melty goodness sandwiched between two warm graham
crackers. I think the truth is that I like an open camp fire, and while I’m
fine just hanging out alone and warming myself by the fire and studying the
stars, the added pull of a camp fire dessert of some decadence draws others to
come stand by the fire. There is more to the sweetness of the s’more itself,
but the shared warmth of friendship around the flames. That’s why I like s’mores.
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