S'mores G'lore!

Today has been an interesting day! Now, this blog, like I had said before is a place for me to talk about my day, whether military related or not and today it is not. Today, my blog is about s'mores and my incredibly frustrating experience with them.

Yesterday, around 9:30pm, I got the sudden urge to eat s'mores. Unfortunately, I dont live in the woods nor do I have a fire pit. I do, however have a grill where I can burn charcoal and have me some delicious s'mores. I told my sweet and patient fiancée that I would like to have a s'mores party with him and his younger brother visiting from Virginia and so off to our local Target we went. We picked up all the necessary items: Honey Maid graham crackers, Hersey chocolate, and JetPuffed marshmallows (the big ones).

While we were there, we found ourselves in a conversation with two of the kind Target employees. We told them about our s'mores party and how we were going to use our grill and they asked why a grill? Apparently, there are a lot of ways you can make s'mores, easier ways at that. You can put then in the oven with the broiler on, you can put them in the microwave, you can put the oven at 400 degrees and put them on a cookie sheet or you can make them over a fire on a grill. I mean, a microwave, seriously?

If I had known all of these ways, I would have made them all the time when I lived at home with my parents in a very city-like apartment.

We went home and decided it was too late to make s'mores and also, we forgot that we had loaned to charcoal to Michael's grandpa. We also forgot to get the long bamboo skewers, so my s'more party will just have to wait until tomorrow.

This afternoon, we went over to Michael's grandfathers house and picked up the charcoal and later in the evening, we went to Target to pick up the long bamboo skewers. Yes! My s'more party was finally going to happen. We get home, get all the s'more ingredients out and start to assemble the coal on the grill. Once all the stuff was out and the charcoal was on the grill, we start trying to light it. We try like 3x before we try lighting a paper towel first and then putting it on top of the charcoal. It worked! Well, sort of. It only lit two or three of the charcoals out of like 10-15 of them and on top of that, the two or three that did light, went out in a matter of minutes. We repeat the paper towel method two more times before trying cardboard. That had the same effect as the paper towels, except the cardboard lasted longer and it didn't ignite any charcoal. At this point, we have been trying to light the charcoal for about 20 minutes. Finally, we call Michael's grandfather who, last Saturday, lit the charcoal with no problem. He told us to use newspaper and if that didn't work, get some lighter fluid. Michael wanted to go straight for the lighter fluid, but with the charcoal we had, it said not to use any because it was supposed to, and I use supposed to, light without any lighter fluid. So with convincing from me, we use the newspaper. And yes, it did NOT work. Big surprise there! Right about now, I am cold, there are bugs everywhere, and everywhere around me smells like burned paper. Michael suggests using the broiler on in the oven. No, of course not, I want real, authentic s'mores, roasted over a real fire. My sweet and patient fiancée then decides we are going to use lighter fluid.

We drive over to the local Walmart and buy the lighter fluid. I think at this point, it wasn't so much about the s'mores, but just the satisfaction of getting the fire to start. We get back home, drench the coal and newspaper with lighter fluid and light it. HUGE flames come up. YES, we did it! No, we really didn't. The flames quickly died down and so we added more lighter fluid. Again, huge flames, this time so big that a piece of newspaper escapes the grill and falls on the ground. But again, like the last fire, it too died down quickly. Michael started eating the chocolate. He was done. He conceded to the fire. S'mores were not going to happen tonight. We cleaned up and went inside.

After a couple of minutes, when the frustration went away, I walked over to the oven, turned it to broil, and stuck a marshmallows on my skewer and started roasting it. The came out wonderful. 

    Yum!

Through this experience, I learned something very valuable that I will need in this crazy navy life; Sometimes in life things won't go your way and you are gonna have to suck it up and be creative. This lesson, fortunately, was small and easlily fixed. Maybe next time, it won't be so easy, but with the help and support of my loving fiancée, I think I will be able to handle anything the Navy and life throws at me. Thanks for reading, happy blogging.