Do you S'more?

Well, with the weather as fantastic as it was, it was always going to be a good camping trip, but we really did have a fantastic time.

OK, so the 2 hrs stuck on the M25 on Friday evening, (“We averaged about 35 m.p.h.!” commented the Husband in disgust – even for the van, I’ll admit that is pretty slow), combined with Pink requiring 3 wee stops was fairly wearing. Just because I love camping doesn’t mean I’m full of the joys the whole time. However, for good value, and family posterity, the 3^rd wee stop (10 minutes from the camp site, after she’d drunk a significant portion of the litre bottle the Husband had given the kids at the first stop) resulted in a ‘Tent, the Bucket and Me’ style episode whereby the Husband totally failed to appreciate how to position her while she did her road-side wee, and she pee’d, fountain like, over her pants and his ankles on the side of the A26. I did laugh. But only on the inside.

That, and some dodgy portaloos on site aside, it was great. We were camping with friends, so the kids quickly formed a pack and headed off into the woods, emerging occasionally for face painting and sustenance. On Saturday morning, some of the older kids did a bushcraft ‘knife skills’ course and made tea light holders out of wood and birch bark, we had camp fires on Friday and Saturday night. Apart from a few mozzie bites and a marshmallow burn sustained by Pink, no injuries to speak of.

There was lots of cake – gingerbread loaf (Louise’s granny’s recipe) chocolate zucchini cake (Catherine’s sister’s recipe) and almond cake (Nigella’s easy almond cake from domestic goddess), lots of meat, and there were S’mores.

Have you ‘S’mored’ before? You really should.

Apparently they are an American thing, requiring Graham crackers, marshmallows and milk chocolate. We didn’t have Graham crackers, but Louise’s Cooking at the Campsite book suggested using digestive biscuits. We thought that would be too sweet, but Catherine had Ritz crackers, and Louise had Rich tea, so we tested extensively. I think the Ritz crackers won out for me – the combination had the salty/sweet thing going on, although if I dared to reach for the ‘Umami’ label, I’m sure someone with higher-brow tastes than me would try and shoot me.

Intrigued? Go on, you know you can't resist. For each S’more you will need:

2 marshmallows + pointy stick or skewer for toasting

2 Ritz crackers, Rich Tea biscuits or the like

1 chunk of milk chocolate

Method: Toast the marshmallows on the camp fire/BBQ to your liking. Smear the marshmallow onto one of the crackers/biscuits, top with the chunk of chocolate and sandwich with the second cracker. Eat. Get marshmallow everywhere and go back for more.

The strawberries? well after a couple of glasses of vino, they seemed like a good idea