North Woods Postcard: S’More, Please
Jul 26th, 2009 by Marilyn
Greetings from the north! There’s a wonderful Tell Simmer coming up tomorrow, and special guest posts after that – but first, a quick flaming postcard from the lake.
We’re enjoying marvelous days of sunny breezes, cold waves and hearty, hike-inducing meals. And because the lodge dining room’s Swedish meatballs, house-cured gravlax and wild blueberry desserts aren’t enough, guests tend to follow dinner with a trip down the beach, nosing their way toward wood smoke and marshmallows, an endless summer fire.
The resort kindly dots driftwood benches with Hershey bars and grahams. Josie skips the crackers, preferring a sticky sandwich of chocolate and white. Her fingers are glued together after this unholy sugar melt. Until they’re licked apart.
I do like traditional s’mores, but as I’m more of a pretzel girl, I’m considering surprising tomorrow’s evening crowd with a bag of Rold Golds. My plan, from top to bottom: pretzel, chocolate, burnt marshmallow, chocolate, pretzel. Salty, sweet, creamy, on-vacation-but-tense-about-leaving. Josie and I have dubbed it the PMS’more.
That is all. Wish you were here, but hope you’re having your own marvelous time. By the way, my brother, sister and I were inveterate pyromaniacs who charred marshmallows over the stove each and every time my parents left the house. I’m just saying. You can play North Woods at home, and when I get home, I will.
Do you have marshmallow memories, or – like me – memory like a marshmallow. Do you toast golden, or go for the full char? Banana boats or s’mores? Tell your camp tales in the comments – and tune into Simmer all week for lovely surprise guests.
I always toasted my marshmallows to a perfectly even, puffy, golden glow all the around (and passed the accidentally black ones on to my mom, who likes that sort of thing) and then slipped them in between two Le Petit Ecolier dark chocolate biscuits ( http://www.lubiscuitsna.com/varieties.html ) Yum!
Marilyn, these photos are wonderful! I love your idea for the PMS’more. The graham cracker-marshmallow-chocolate combination is typically too sweet for me. But with a salty pretzel against the sweetness – now that’s a s’more I can get behind. Thank you for the postcard. Enjoy the rest of your trip.
Is the PMS’more only to be enjoyed once a month?
I’m not big on graham crackers. If I’m going to eat them, they *must* be cinnamon grahams. The pretzel idea sounds yummy, though. I think Ritz crackers might be good, too. I also don’t care for bananas, so though I helped my Girl Scouts make them, I never ate them beyond one trial bite of dd’s. (Warm, mushy banana is even worse.) My favorite marshmallow treat is marguerites made with Ritz instead of Saltines. Spread peanut butter (only time I use Jif or Skippy instead of natural PB) on crackers, top with marshmallows, broil until marshmallows are golden.
I will be blacklisted from Simmer for these comments, but it should be noted that I don’t really care for Smores. Eating something sticky and gooey with my hands gives me the heebie-jeebies. Forget global warming, a three-year-old in my house with a Bomb Pop is my worst nightmare. Sticky.
OK. I might be exaggerating a bit. My wife and daughter do love Smores, and when I tell them I don’t care for Smores, they look at me like I need to be replaced. However, I’ve been known to indulge their love of Smores, and I have a Smores bread pudding on my list of recipes to try.
I’m a camper and a cook, but my camp cooking skills need some work. I usually subsist on granola bars, beef jerky, and lunch meat.
I do love a good campfire though. Thanks for sharing your vacation with us. I know how difficult is to post from the road, so thank you.
I’ll just eat a slice of pie while everyone enjoys a Smore,
muddy
Having gone to overnight camp in Maine for many summers, I have fond memories of s’mores. They’re now my kids’ favorite treat – over the campfire in the summer and in the fireplace when we’re snowed in.
Muddy Waters cracks me up because he sounds just like my husband who CANNOT deal with any stickiness whatsoever. I wonder if it’s some kind of psych disorder…
Quick! Get a wet paper towel!
mmm. how luck you are!! something magical happens to marshmallows when they meet flame – outdoors or in. when i was a kid at camp, we used to sit on the floor at night in the back of the cabin, stick marshmallows on unbended bobby pins, light a match to the mallows and wait until the outside was scorched and the inside soft, runny and yielding. You had to wait a minute for the bobby pin to cool and then stick the whole mess – crunchy and dark, gooey and pale, into your mouth all together. yum: heaven!
susan schwartz
montreal
So many marshmallow thoughts. Thanks for sharing them (and feel free to add.)
Susan Schwartz: love your bobby pin method – and love seeing you here!
Could that S’More be anymore lovely?! I think I would like to be adopted by your family. I cook and clean. Does that help my cause?
Gorgeous photos! I picked up a bag of marshmellow goodness last night…perhaps we’ll make smores tonight.
That picture is so lovely!!! I want to go there on our next vacation!
~ Susan
You need to look for the “oven” amongst the logs of the fire. You can stick your marshmallow in and get it to a nice golden brown. No flames to burn the marshmallow for me!
My family isn’t much into camping — my father refuses to sleep anywhere that doesn’t have an adjoining bathroom — but we always did s’mores over the Weber grill. My favorite s’mores memory is from when I was first dating my husband — we spent a week at his family’s “cabin” (a 5 bedroom house, really, but it didn’t have insulation) on a lake in northern Michigan with his (terrifying) family, and spent every night around the firepit in the back yard making s’mores and listening to his dad and his uncle tell absurd stories. It was my first experience of the midwest and my first experience of his extended family, and the whole week has this timeless sense to it.