Little Miss Mallow

Have you ever had the fortune of being left with someone else's child to watch over? You get that sense of responsibility knowing you can spoil this kid without having any of those real long term consequences like medical bills because they ate too much or dental bills because of what they ate. Everything in moderation and you'll be fine is what I've always gone by. Well, that’s far beside the point I'm trying to make. Lets tap the brakes here for a bit and state that I am not going advocate doing anything to harm or emotionally scare anybody; no, my sense of humor is entertaining someone while entertaining myself a little at their expense.

If you haven't been to our website, www.miamallows.com, tisk tisk tisk. We'll wait here while you wander over . . . For everybody else, I'll keep going. That cute little girl pictured on our website is my niece. A very talented friend was kind enough to draw her up from a picture we had lying around and she looked so well drawn that we knew it was perfect for the site. She's an energetic girl who looooves marshmallows, making her our favorite niece, naturally. Every now and again we goof around and she takes the same ribbings we all took when we were her age and she's pretty quick to know when something is up. A while back, when she was really on a marshmallow kick and we decided it was time for her to taste a new flavor and gauge her reaction as a forerunner to a possible new flavor.

After chomping down two chocolate covered bite-size mallow squares using a skewer stick, she took a thirty second break and ran over to the couch to see what all the laughter was about. I think she later figured out that the conversation humming over her head was actually about her and the laughing was the ruse to unseat her from her command perch. While she was away, we took the opportunity to run her skewer into a bit of country sausage that was sitting one bowl over; a leftover from our just-finished dinner. Moving quickly, we replaced the now-loaded skewer back in its place before a tiny hand led its owner back to take care of some unfinished business. As cute as a button, she picked up the skewer, rolled her eyes toward the television, unrolled her tongue, and proceeded to lick off what she thought was chocolate. After the third lick, and the fifth set of eyes that had locked onto her in the moment of dead silence, I think she finally figured it out!

Her face focused as her mind began to work out the mystery of the not so sweet marshmallow that had slipped in right under her nose, literally. And here, we'll skip over her half-minute dramatic moment of diva-ism and subsequent tantrum and finally reach the point I had been trying to make and that is: marshmallows are in fact a useful multipurpose means of entertaining a child; results will vary.

A full 98% of the time, kids love our marshmallows (the remaining 2% are fibbing we believe), were it not for loving parents and mischievous adults who remember looking up the chain of command and realizing how far it went up and realizing it takes a lifetime to climb even in your own home.

Next time, we'll discuss marshmallows in the quantum mechanics world and how flavored ones may just disprove String Theory.

The sausage on a stick marshmallow.