Campfire Brand Giant Roasters

This web site offers a lot of information about marshmallows. And it proves that no food, however humble, cannot be dandified by chefs and confectioners seeking to create a premium product at premium prices. I'm not actually bothered by that phenomenon, which adds to the variety of human existence in relatively benign ways, and which was one of the flourishes that separated us from the commies back in the day. But that doesn't mean I need to buy gourmet marshmallows myself, or at least very many.

This evening, during a shopping trip I didn't participate in, other members of the family found and bought a bag of the largest marshmallows I've ever seen, Campfire Brand Giant Roasters. Each cylinder is about two inches long and one-and-a-half inches in diameter, and weighs 28 grams (which is just shy of an ounce). By comparison, regular-sized Jet-Puffed marshmallows (Kraft) weigh about 7.5 grams. Giant Roasters aren't fancy marshmallows created in small batches by skillful third-generation 'mallow artisans, but jumbo whites made via industrial extrusion and bagged for our convenience.

Campfire is a brand of Doumak Inc. The bag boasts: "Naturally Fat-Free • Gluten Free • The Original Since 1917." Ah, the marshmallows that went with Pershing and the AEF. Ingredients: Corn Syrup, Sugar, Dextrose, Modified Food Starch (Corn), Water, Gelatin, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Tetrasodium Pyprophshate. Investigate a little more closely (at the web site) and you'll find that the gelatin is made from "type A porkskins." But also that "marshmallows shipped to the Middle East are produced using only gelatin derived from fish."

I expect the squeamish or vegans among us to recoil at the notion that porkskins have made their way into bagged marshmallows, but I marvel at the inventiveness of food technologists. Still, what's a "type A" porkskin? The hide of overachieving pigs?

Anyway, I was also glad to learn that Campfire Marshmallows are made in Elk Grove Village, Ill. -- a nearby Chicago suburb. That means that I'm supporting locally sourced food. That's what all right-thinking people do. Think globally, eat marshmallows locally.