Life in the Trenches (or Beneath the Couch Cushions): Marshmallow Madness

So I am a sucker for novelty. I am the consummate American consumer that is pandered to because they expect me to be a sucker for novelty. Cute tiny cookies. Pretty rainbow cupcakes. I can pretty much resist buying candy bars all year long until the holidays come along and they put out pumpkin, egg shaped, or Christmas tree Reeses cups, and the Hersheys ghosts and peppermint patty bats. Complete sucker. Why do I have to eat something just because it’s cute?? So, of course, when I saw the bags of giant Campfire Roaster marshmallows, they may as well have pre-loaded them into my shopping cart. I couldn’t pass up the enormous marshmallows—just imagine the S’mores they would make!!

Okay, so one of these monster marshmallows contains ninety calories and fifteen grams of sugar. That’s the equivalent of three normal size marshmallows. It’s ridiculous. I let them sit in the pantry for almost a month, not quite willing to eat that much sugar and crash my calorie count for the day in one bite. Well, it about drove Michael right out of his mind looking at that unopened bag of marshmallow sugary goodness day in and day out until he just couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Pleeeassse??? Please can I have a marshmallow?”, he pleaded with me yesterday. I confess I was in a weak spot. My heart was breaking because we have to take Lenny back today and I am a big time emotional eater. Sadness is trumped by sugar every time. Yes, we can have the marshmallows. But I wanted to have a campfire and toast them up—that’s just too big of a marshmallow to eat cold, straight out of the bag.

I sent Michael out back to gather up some twigs for kindling. I think he found five tiny sticks and tossed them carelessly into the fire pit. Yeah, thanks, that oughta do us! I scraped up some more twigs and built a little teepee starter, tucking a few twists of newspaper in between and doused it all with lighter fluid to give us a good start. The little flames motivated Michael to go gather some bigger sticks and we soon had ourselves a nice warm fire going. Time to break out the roasters!

We have a pair of hotdog roasting forks for camping that also make great marshmallow sticks…normally. Two of these mammoth marshmallows barely fit side by side on the fork prongs. I should’ve listened to that little voice in my head to only make one, but there’s two prongs! You can’t have an empty prong! That’s clearly a wasted roasting opportunity! Michael can be much smarter than me at times, he stuck to only roasting one. Into the fire went our forks, laden with marshmallow goodness. Michael likes to hit the flames and his quickly caught fire and almost fell off his fork. We blew it out and he let it cool a little bit before trying to eat the burnt sticky mess. I took my time with my two marshmallows, twirling them slowly just above the coals, watching them puff up and gently brown in the warm red glow. Soon enough they were golden toasty and ready to eat. I slowly slid the first marshmallow off the fork and took a bite of the melty treat. Gooey sweet goodness! One definitely would’ve been enough, but I made two and Mom always made us finish whatever we put on our plates so I slurped up the second one as well. I rolled up the bag and put the rest back in the pantry. I’m thinking of using them up in Rice Krispy treats. I can’t imagine trying to make myself eat another one on its own—too big, too sweet, too much sugar even on the saddest day. But, they’re still pretty cool—who wouldn’t love a giant, gooey marshmallow? Brilliant.