The road to Tastyville

Recently, Randy handed me a strange, brown, plank-like cookie.
”What is this?”
“Homemade graham cracker.”
“Huh.”
“Why is he making homemade graham crackers?” I wondered as I took a bite. It was pretty good – like a store-bought graham cracker, but slightly thicker and chewy instead of crispy.

I’m not a big fan of graham crackers. To me they are bested by their Anglo cousins, digestive biscuits, who suffer from a somewhat nastier name but boast a more thought-provoking texture. However, the history of this rather boring graham cookie is kind of cool. They’re part of that weird legacy of early American health foods invented back when people believed that cereal, hot cocoa and enemas could cure their ills (check out The Road to Wellville for similarly quirky convictions). Of course, the way we’ve been clinging to wine, chocolate, and blueberries lately indicates that we are still hinging similar dreams of vitality and immortality on the stuff we choose to put in our bodies.

Graham crackers were the bright idea of party boy Sylvester Graham, who recommended “…hard mattresses, open bedroom windows, chastity, cold showers, loose clothing, pure water and vigorous exercise.” This is my favorite part: “Graham believed sexual desires irritated the body and caused disease, and that the remedy was to marry, get the urge out of one's system, and let it fade.”

Although I’m with him on the pure water and loose clothing, I don’t think Sylvester and I would have had much to talk about.

Randy’s project meant that our kitchen countertop was suddenly monopolized by vast expanses of dull brown cookie/crackers. Clearly something had to be done. (Perhaps something akin to Newman disposing of the muffin stumps? “All right, I'm going to need a clean eight-ounce glass,” he says, pulling out four quarts of milk. “As I understand it, we have a situation here and time is of the essence.”)

I didn’t pull out four quarts of milk; instead I lugged my giant KitchenAid mixer up onto the crowded counter and whipped up (literally!) a batch of homemade marshmallows using this recipe from Cooking for Engineers. I was shocked to find that they came out really well. I’m not sure why, but I was just convinced that it wouldn’t work, and that I would wind up weepily bemoaning my culinary failures to Randy. Again. (This had already happened last week after a sodden, mushy tarte tatin emerged from the oven. I stomped my feet and wailed in frustration. “I’m not sure I have the energy for this,” he said wearily. Nor did I. I think we just went out for pho instead and everything was happy again.)

So, in a move that would probably make old Sly Graham roll over in his (hard, well-ventilated) coffin, I slathered some of the marshmallow fluff onto the graham crackers, dipped the suckers in a bowl of melted Valrhona, and suddenly we had a cripplingly rich snack that has now surely contributed to our premature demise. Since it’s obviously too late to get back on the road to Wellville, I guess it's time to take a hot shower and climb into my soft, luxurious bed.