S'MORES - an American Favorite

Seven weeks ago, when I was contemplating what would be a good present for my host family, my mom and I came up with the idea of s'mores - america's favorite camping food, and probably something they don't eat in Paraguay too often. So, I bought a box of graham crackers, a bag of marshmallows, and two bars of hershey's chocolate. It is actually a lot more difficult to fit all of those things into a backpack than you might think, but I suceeded. Only concern - What would they (meaning the security people) think at the airport? Suspicious? But, my marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate survived the beedy eyes of airport officials, survived being squished into my backpack, survived the heat of the first week, survived the cold of the Paraguayan winter, and made it all the way to the end of week 5, where they were made into delicious s'mores, via la micro-onda.

Yes, sadly we had to use the microwave, as there was no campfire handy to do the authentic toasting of the marshmallows. I did try using the gas stove that my family has to toast them, but that didn't work so well. Ended up burning them more than toasting, and not fulling warming all the way. Oh well. Actually, it is quite entertaining to make s'mores in the microwave, as they puff up really big and ooze onto the plate, if you aren't careful. And they taste wonderfully yummy, all the same. As much as my family tries, they can't pronounce marshmallows correctly. It is more "marsh-shmaaaaallows" instead of "marshmeuuuuhhlows". I did get my parents to try them, and they did like them (seriously, who wouldn't like s'mores?). My dad then asked me how many people in America eat. I answered anwhere from 1 to 3, but that when I was little, I probably ate as many as 5. My siblings easily ate 3 to 5 for merienda, as first they has to try it, to see if they liked it, then once they discovered how wonderful they were, they had to make lots more in the microwave, plus try one on the stove.

It definitely was a very entertaining merienda, and gave them a good taste of traditional American camping. :D To my surprise, you can buy marshmallows in Paraguay (even the little colored ones!) I kinda thought Americans would be the only people crazy enough to pack that much sugar into one tiny little piece of comida.... hahaha. Here are some pictures: