In my effort to make food fun again, one of the things I’ve been doing is thinking back to the foods I loved when I was a kid.  I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what made the foods I loved so lovable, at least to me.    I’d like to rekindle some of that spark I had for the foods I loved when I was a kid.  Back then it wasn’t about calories, or sodium or fat or carbs.  It was simply about the fact that the food tasted good and I enjoyed eating it.  I’d like to find a way to get back to those days.

One of the foods I loved when I was a kid was s’mores.  I loved toasting the marshmallow, even though I almost always would get impatient and burn it about halfway through.  I loved using the graham cracker to pull my burnt black marshmallow off the stick and I loved the melting squares of Hershey bar that generally got all over my fingers.  It was great taking that first bite, oozing with chocolate and marshmallow, knowing that I’d probably end up with a sticky face and sticky fingers, but already eager to burn my next marshmallow and start all over again.

There was just something about the taste and texture of this treat that felt right to me.  Although nowdays I’d probably want to use Dove Dark Chocolate and multi-grain graham crackers, back in the day I just perfectly satisfied with good old Hershey’s chocolate and whatever graham crackers were first on the shelf at the store.  What we used didn’t matter, what mattered was the taste and the fun we had making the treats.

I think, if I’m honest, it was the fun we had that made the food taste so good.  When I remember making s’mores I remember that I wasn’t worrying about the calorie content or if eating the treat would make me fat.  In my childhood memories, no one is chiding me for eating too many, or warning me about the fattening nature of the treat.  Instead, we’re all sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, laughing when they burn, and sucking sticky fingers after munching down another s’more.

I guess in the end, it isn’t the food that makes the experience, it was the experience that made the food.  I want to try to remember what it felt like to eat something just for the sake of eating it, with no concern for any of the things that I now worry about every time I take a bite.  My guess is that recreating this feeling will allow me to put healthier foods on my list of favorites.

And, if not, there’s always s’mores.