No s'more.

Longtime readers will remember by strange relationship with s'mores. Or not. Or maybe it wasn't that strange after all. 

The strange relationship was that I never had an actual s'more until last year. We were not a camping family. Our idea of roughing it was a motel with no ice machine. There was no rustlin' up a mess o' catfish in our house. Mom would go to the A&P and rustle up a mess o' canned goods. Sure, we had Hershey's chocolate, and graham crackers, and sometimes even marshmallows (sometimes toasted on sticks over the BBQ grill), but they never came together in that grand concoction of summer called the s'more. 

But over the years I tried a number of s'more-flavored things. Well, this was a recent one. 

Balance Bars come in many flavors, and s'more is one of them. Others include Cookie Dough, Dark Chocolate Peanut, Chocolate Mint Cookie Crunch, and Caramel Nut Blast. Glorified candy bar, you say? (And you say it like it's a bad thing.) I say: Hey, I could have had an actual s'more instead, if I wanted to go to the trouble of making one.

And the real s'more would have been better, because this just sort of tasted like something that could vaguely remind you of s'mores. I could barely taste the graham or the marshmallow. The chocolate is so-so. If I hadn't read the label, I don't know that I'd have guessed what it was.

Really, it must be good for you, because it doesn't taste that great. (And it does have 14g protein, 3g fiber, 23 vitamins and minerals, so maybe it is good for you.)

Bottom line: Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. Sometimes the real thing is not healthy, but it's real. And now I'm getting hungry thinking about it. (And not for a mess o' catfish.)