The Contest* - Week 2

* "The Contest"? Is that what we are really calling this?

It's Friday again, so that means it is time for Marianne and I to each post another letter. This correspondence was one of the first ten that I wrote, a part of the bursting-with-passion-love-letter series, if you will! Let's see if that exuberance paid off, or just scared folks away like the unrequited loves of my early teenage years.

Dear Nabisco:

S’mores aren’t just for campfires here at our house. We have perfected the microwave technique, and when a troop of eleven Girl Scouts was eagerly awaiting snacktime at my kitchen table, the oven and some cookie sheets proved invaluable. I have really only found one way to screw up a s’more, and that would be pulling graham crackers out of anything other than a navy blue Honey-Maid box. Recently I was standing outside at a friend’s house, with my marshmallow stick dancing carefully near a flame, when I heard teenage voices saying “these graham crackers taste stale or something”. I smugly asked if they were Honey-Maid, knowing full well what the answer would be as I popped the toasted marshmallow into my mouth and just ate the chocolate on the side. No Nabisco, no s’more for this cracker snob. (Please note: I would have eaten the Nabisco red box variety, but the blue is by far my favorite.)

I was not a big fan of sweets when I was younger, a late bloomer of sorts. One of my favorite after dinner treats was a graham cracker dunked in milk. The trick was getting the cracker just soaked enough to be mushy, but without breaking and falling in. Only Honey-Maid had just the right crunch to be paired with the soggy side and superior flavor. If I pass our kitchen pantry on my way to sit down, I still grab that glass of milk, but if I am just wandering by the snack shelves on my way to do something else, I just grab some graham crackers to eat plain on the way. Or, if I am getting out staples for dinner, I might grab a rectangle, or maybe if I have the pantry door open to look at the calendar, I eat some, or maybe if the potato chips I ate weren’t quite what I wanted afterall, I will grab a quick square. I am always so relieved that two full rectangles is a serving size. That can be broken down into sixteen smaller rectangles to be spread out over the course of an afternoon. Who am I kidding? It is more a matter of my finding that two servings seems acceptable as I realize that eight broken halves adds up to more than two full crackers.

Years ago, when my son was a baby about to be introduced to solid food, of course I had Cheerios on the brain (and in my pockets and all over the floor). However, the second item on the list that the pediatrician rattled off was graham crackers. (I am sure the “blue box only” was implied.) I may be the only one around here who still has hankerings for plain Cheerios, but the graham cracker crumb trails could be from any one of the four of us. My husband is a big fan of the cinnamon variety, and after over eighteen years of marriage and two teenagers, he has learned that using the word “bargain” in a sentence with graham crackers that are not Honey-Maid will not impress anyone here.

On another note, some people might think you can cheat on your graham crackers when making a crust. Why don’t they realize they just end up with crummy crumbs? I would like to thank you for saving me the trouble of sacrificing my snacks, and having to get out the food processor, by having that blue box of graham cracker crumbs just waiting for me in the baking aisle. I also appreciate the larger sized blue box of graham crackers that you have made available, as it gives me a much greater sense of security that we will not run out before my next trip to the grocery store.

A graham cracker by any other name really isn’t the same, unless that name is “dram crapper” as spoken by my son’s four-year-old friend many years ago.

Happily dunking,

Andrea Casarsa

The result? I did find an envelope in my mailbox! While the form letter style may have masked any strong feelings Mondelez International has for me, they did include a coupon for a free nabisco product. 5 POINTS!

It would have been greedy to expect s'more?