Playing with fire

This recipe is very, very good. Simple, but good. (How much skirt steak is there per steer, anyhow? Like, if we bought half a steer from a local organic farmer, how much delectable skirt steak would we get? A lot, I hope.)

We made dinner completely outside on the grill today. The s.o. even cooked the tortillas on a cast-iron pan on the grill. The firewood came from our woods. The cilantro came from our garden.

We ate on the screened porch. The sunset was pink.

Afterward I suddenly remembered something.

"The coals have gone out, and I forgot to make s'mores," I pouted.

"Oh, you're right."

"Wait! We have a gas stove."

I speared two marshmallows on a fork and laid out graham crackers with a couple of cubes of Swiss milk chocolate. I sparked a flame and started toasting my marshmallows.

"WHOA!" I shouted, blowing furiously. It had taken me approximately three seconds to catch the marshmallows on fire. I repeated the catching-on-fire-and-blowing-it-out action six or seven times and then judged that if I waited any longer the marshmallows would fall into the burner. I rushed the molten sugar to the waiting chocolate and graham cracker and squished it all together.

"How is it?" asked the s.o., who was abstaining because he isn't very fond of sweets.

"Great, but it's missing something," I said.

"Smoke?"

"Kind of. But mainly pieces of charred stick."

Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby...but it's still really good.