Fork + Fauna

That night I remember having hot chocolate, and lots of laughs—at least, before I fell asleep—along with realizing that when meteor “shower”, they don’t usually pour out of the sky like water from your faucet. (And that’s when I started to fall asleep). Someday, I’d like to see a meteor storm, when thousands of meteors fill the sky every hour.

But the more I’ve learned about meteors, the more I’ve been able to keep my sleepy eyes open, even when there’s a lag time between the moments when these leftover bits of comets hit our atmosphere. Those huge streaks across the sky? They’re often just the tiniest bits of dust, but as the Earth passes through the streams of dust from a comet, the speed at which these bits hit creates this amazing, sky-spanning scene.

This year, knowing that the meteor shower was coming up, I knew what I wanted to have to go with it—s’mores.

But not just any s’mores. I’d been eyeing those fancy marshmallows in our local expensive natural foods store, and I wanted to give it a try. Then I realized I could make graham crackers, too. (And yes, I could probably make chocolate, but I didn’t want to get TOO crazy).

First, the graham crackers. I’ve been reading about making your own marshmallows for ages, but I’ve never gotten around to doing it: now I had my excuse. But after looking at the marshmallow recipes, I decided I’d try graham crackers first. I used a recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and bought graham flour for the job. (I’ve have since learned the “graham” is not a tiny little plant ground up into flour, but comes from Dr. Sylvester Graham, a 19th century counterpart to modern day health gurus—his followers even opened the country’s first “health food store”). They took about an hour to make, and the best part is that you can shape them however you want. So I made several gigantic s’more crackers to fit my gigantic mouth.

From Fork and Fauna

And then, the marshmallows. So many recipes out there—vegan, vegetarian, agar, marshmallow fluff—and every website cautioned how messy and sticky they were. So, the night the Perseids were supposed to peak, I enlisted the real chef in the house. He made the marshmallow fluff and the 232-degree candy syrup while I tried to pass along my newfound knowledge of meteors.

For example: Along with giving off light, they make sounds, which are likely from very low frequency radio waves.

Yet the chef was skeptical. “Sounds?” he asked. And then, of course, he had to speculate on what they might sound like. “Wheeeeee!” Or, better yet: “Help! My butt is on fire!”

Sadly, our marshmallows had the same luck as one of those hot-hiney’d meteors. With so many substitutions (vegetarian gelatin, agave syrup), and no candy thermometer, the first attempt was thin sheet of very tasty goo. You’ll see the second attempt below, when I burned the candy syrup and then poured it in the sink, where it crystallized. (Luckily a good friend saw me mid-disaster—culinary accidents are always much more fun with a witness.)

From Fork and Fauna

At least there were the meteors. We went outside to look. The sky was socked in with fog. When I woke at three to try again the fog still lingered, along with the smell of burned sugar in our kitchen.