Gimme S'More

It has become my custom to make candy for Christmas gifts. You might think it’s a little tiresome to do the same thing year on year, but it turns out that people now expect this stuff and whenever I give them something—something perfectly lovely, mind you—that’s not toffee, fudge, truffles and bark, I’m inevitably met with a crestfallen face and an almost-sobbed, “No-no candy?”

Well, all these bazillion calories don’t make themselves, so I’ve been loading up on some of the ingredients.

But that’s not really what I’m writing about today. When I went to the marshmallow aisle, I discovered something new: marshmallows on steroids: (In this photo the normal ones, which I use in the fudge, are between two packets of the “Campfire Giant Roasters”.)

I do not get the need for this, unless it’s just unbridled American excess—we make ‘em huge because we can. What would you use to hold one of these bad boys over the campfire—a pitchfork? And what happens if one falls off your roasting stick into the embers? You’d start a conflagration that could take out an entire national forest.

And in the end—you can singe the interior of your mouth just fine on the normal sized ones, and I don’t see supersized graham crackers and Hershey bars for constructing the mother-of-all-S’Mores.

But obviously my way of thinking is Bad for the Economy, so I merely express my wonder and haul out the Kitchen Aid to set to work.