56- THE DEFINITIVE FINE ART OF PREPARING AND DEVOURING JUST ONE DELICIOUS, BUT MESSY, S'MORE!

These campfire and home delights, easy to make and difficult to consume without a sticky mess on the fingers and around one's mouth, have undoubtedly become America's 'SWEETheart'! Maybe that's why August 10th was declared the 'National S'mores Day!'
The very first mention, I believe, of the term was in the "Official S'more Recipe in Tramping and Trailing With Girl Scouts" way back in 1927. Let's see, that was over 80 years ago.
Today, we can find recipes for 'Baked Alaska Peanut S'mores', 'Double Chocolate' ones, ''Frozen S'mores', 'Poundcake' ones, 'Mexican S'mores', 'S'mores Biscuits', 'Bread Puddin'' ones and on and on. BUT, most of us simply like the original, old-fashioned recipe of two whole grahams, a Hershey's bar and two toasted marshmallows. What we don't agree on is how, and if we know how, to toast the marshmallow!
I was 'taught' at Camp Bethel during the summers near Fincastle, Virginia. Search for a small, slender branch and used my handy penknife to sharpen the end. I selected two nice, plump 'mallows, NOT the tiny ones used for hot cocoa, and inserted. Oh, be sure that the camp counselors have a campfire going on. Stand close to, but not over the edge of the campfire and slowly turn the 'mallows until the almost moment that they erupt into, uh, flame. If one or both hits the dust? Try, try again. Back off a bit and be ever so careful to pull, with fingers, each almost charred 'mallow off the stick onto one half of the graham that has an entire, no almonds, Hershey's on the bottom. Do the same for the 'mallow on the other one. Make sure that the two charred delights are centered equally on the chocolate bar. Lastly, use your sticky fingers to lower the second graham onto the perfect S'more.
Take a second or three and check it out, all over. Ready? Squeeze together to form a squishy, gooey 'wich! The last step is to figure out how to bite it...and then do it. If you're one of those "I don't wanna get my fingers and mouth messy" kinda persons, you should have gone to the opera instead of camp! REMEMER...all of this action going on is around a campfire and persons around you are using only two hands to hold all of those ingredients! Got it? WAIT, suppose you have it all together, and it falls on the ground? Remember the 5-second rule that every kid knows? I do....
Toasting those plump, puffy white critters? Seems that everyone has their own 'spacial' style of accomplishing that assignment. Whatever way YOU choose to toast is bestest. I like mine charred a bit. I even know a few aficionados who first like to blacken a 'mallow, pull off the results, devour and toast what's left again. Hey, go for it, watever your "it" may be..........squire