When I was a little girl, we did our share of camping as a family. My Grandpa Jack always had a boat or RV or both, and my summers were about going on the lake and campfires and S'mores. It was the summer between kindergarten and first grade that my grandpa told me on one particular camping trip, while roasting marshmallows by the dying fire, that he invented S'mores. I took that literally. For our first Show and Tell day at school, I told everyone that my grandpa invented S'mores! I explained what they were and how to make them. To my surprise, some of my classmates had tried them before, and even made them on their camping trips. My grandpa was a genius AND famous! I'm not sure how that bubble got popped, maybe the teacher shared it with my mom during Open House or maybe I shared my excitement with my mom and she set me straight. However, that did not dampen my enthusiasm for S'mores.
I anticipated the perfectly browned and gooey marshmallow between the graham cracker and chocolate. And then Rick stuck a marshmallow on Sophia's stick and thrust it into the flames. Out pops a charred marshmallow, everyone is barking at me to hold the graham cracker and chocolate plate towards them, and in the chaos of eager hands, Sophia gets that S'more and starts chowing down. This is not going as planned. And we all know "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray" so I was going to try to recapture my own experience. After I took some pictures of Sophia, obliviously enjoying her first S'more no matter what shape of form the S'more was in.
I head back out to the campfire in search of a stick. Everyone was finished with their S'mores and had thrown their sticks into the fire. I settle for the best stick in the shortest amount of time and stick two plump marshmallows on the end. No sooner had I roasted half of the marshmallows to brown perfection, my brother runs out with a fire extinguisher and douses the fire out. It was a nice finale to my quest for the perfect S'mores experience. (I think my sister in-law may have the fire extinguishing in action...I was too busy trying to salvage what little marshmallow and patience I had left.)
Sophia has been talking about camping for a good six months. She saw an episode on one of her programs where the kid goes camping and they make a fire and roast marshmallows. Marshmallows=camping in her mind. So last week while I was shopping for our houseboat vacation with our family, I made sure S'mores was on the menu one night. And we just so happened to find a halfway decent place to moor for the night, with plenty of dried wood to make quick of some hot embers. The older cousins learned that they are old enough to earn their reward and collected the wood, under the nervous watchful eye of their mother. (It was a pretty steep slope, but not that steep, jeesh.)
The sun had set, dinner was done and dishes were washed. I had set up exactly how this first S'more experience was going to go down with Sophia. The fire was started.
The sun had set, dinner was done and dishes were washed. I had set up exactly how this first S'more experience was going to go down with Sophia. The fire was started.
I anticipated the perfectly browned and gooey marshmallow between the graham cracker and chocolate. And then Rick stuck a marshmallow on Sophia's stick and thrust it into the flames. Out pops a charred marshmallow, everyone is barking at me to hold the graham cracker and chocolate plate towards them, and in the chaos of eager hands, Sophia gets that S'more and starts chowing down. This is not going as planned. And we all know "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray" so I was going to try to recapture my own experience. After I took some pictures of Sophia, obliviously enjoying her first S'more no matter what shape of form the S'more was in.
I head back out to the campfire in search of a stick. Everyone was finished with their S'mores and had thrown their sticks into the fire. I settle for the best stick in the shortest amount of time and stick two plump marshmallows on the end. No sooner had I roasted half of the marshmallows to brown perfection, my brother runs out with a fire extinguisher and douses the fire out. It was a nice finale to my quest for the perfect S'mores experience. (I think my sister in-law may have the fire extinguishing in action...I was too busy trying to salvage what little marshmallow and patience I had left.)
I'm sure there will be plenty more S'mores experiences. I bet it wasn't the highlight of her trip anyway. How could anything trump the glorious four days of non-stop play with her cousins? I know this makes a much better story than the scene I had imagined in my head while shopping for the supplies. I'm still bitter that my brother used the damn fire extinguisher on what was turning out to be a pretty good marshmallow roast.
No comments:
Post a Comment