by Vic Nelson
Marshmallows were created by ancient Egyptians by squeezing the juice out of the marshmallow plant, Althaea officinalis, and mixing it with honey to produce a remedy for sore throats.
Today's marshmallows do not contain marshmallow sap, and so, do not have any medicinal use. Instead, they are made out of gelatin, sugar and corn starch.
Modern marshmallows come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors and have all sorts of uses and abuses.
One of the traditional uses of marshmallows is toasting them over an open campfire. There are many different styles of toasting marshmallows.
Some people take half an hour to toast a single marshmallow. They hold the marshmallow about a foot over the flame and slowly turn it like a rotisserie
until they obtain a perfect tan coating all the way around the marshmallow.
After they spend so much time and energy to create this work of art, they are reluctant to eat the thing.
Others take much less time and effort to toast their marshmallows.
They hold the marshmallow close to the flame and spin it for a second or two until they get a marshmallow covered with a few ugly black blisters.
They are not concerned at all with how it looks. They are more intent on eating as many marshmallows in as short a time as possible.
Then there are the extreme marshmallow roasters. They poke the marshmallow directly into the flame until it catches fire.
They pull it out of the fire and let the marshmallow burn. It will burn itself out with a soft blue flame and will cover itself with a black, crispy shell of charcoal.
It looks really nasty, but if you pop the whole thing in your mouth and smash it
against the roof of your mouth with your tongue, it will burst open and release all that hot gooey goodness throughout your mouth. Heaven-and-hell-on-a-stick!
You can swallow the whole thing, charcoal and all. It will not kill you.
However, marshmallows do have a dark and deadly side to them. The name of the game is "fluffy bunny".
A group of people with a bag of marshmallows each in turn place a marshmallow in their mouth and then try to utter the phrase "fluffy bunny". As the game progresses, each person places more and more marshmallows in their mouth
until it is no longer possible to utter the phrase "fluffy bunny" intelligibly.
After several elimination rounds the person with the most marshmallows in their mouth is declared the winner.
In most variants of this game, the winner is supposed to swallow the mass of marshmallows.
There are at least two reported deaths by suffocation resulting from "fluffy bunny".
Therefore, Mothers Against Marshmallow Abuse (MAMA) does not approve of this practice and reminds you that the recommended
serving size for marshmallows is four marshmallows eaten separately.
Another thing that MAMA does not approve of is making clothing articles out of marshmallows. Here are instructions for making a
marshmallow bra. This may seem like innocent fun, but,
as Grandad always said, "One thing leads to another". It may start out with a marshmallow bra but the next thing you know, there will be marshmallow hats, sweaters, socks, underwear
and then, of course, the marshmallow bathing suit. This, then will lead directly to guys sitting around the campfire playing "fluffy bunny" with girls wearing marshmallow bikinis.
This can be highly dangerous and can lead to other things that MAMA does not approve of.
So please...eat marshmallows responsibly.