It snowed Thursday night, which prompted me to stomp around the house, muttering compound, multi-hyphenated profanities. I’m not the biggest fan of the snow, and besides, the previous Sunday, it had been 78 degrees and sunny. But there it was. Big fat wet flakes, falling from the sky.

Don’t think that the snow “inspired” me in any way for the next project. Not in the drippy sense of “a toasty project inspired by winter’s first snowfall,” because I like to think of myself as not being that damn slavish to the Seriously Sincere brand of craft porn. Inspiration more came from “It’s cold. We’re going to the ‘rents’ for lunch. They’ve got a fireplace. Marsh-fuckin’-mallows.”

Marshmallows are like my culinary parlor trick. “Watch me pull a marshmallow outta my hat!” The Capt’n — though he claims to be astounded — is more practical. “Why not just buy a pack of Jet Puffs for $2.49? Seems easier.”

But hell, I am a woman of few-ish talents, and homemade marshmallows can be used as a trump card. “Oh, this is a homemade pie.” “This is a homemade cookie.” “Homemade marshmallows, anyone?”

Yes, if pettiness was a sanctioned even, I would be dreaming of Beijing and practicing my homemade graham cracker recipe. Go for that Gold! Metal!

Um, flour.

Anyway. Marshmallows. I follow the Martha Stewart recipe, though this time, circumstances forced a single substitution: when I ran short of corn syrup by a quarter cup (hello, pecan pie), I substituted an 1/8 of a cup of honey and made up the difference with water. It combined with the vanilla to give the mallows a divine taste — better than anything store-bought, believe me.

I also finally found a use for some disposable foil cake tins I’d had for awhile. It only required brushing the sides with vegetable oil, and when it came time to unmold the Cakes o’ Mallow, there wasn’t any problem.

I squeezed about fifty out of the batch and boxed them up in four Glad sandwich meat containers. They stood stacked on my counter like a Leaning Tower of White Fondant, though we took one box to my parents’ for roasting — we didn’t actually roast them. And the Capt’n utilized a few in a cup of hot chocolate, but really, it wasn’t until I was looking at the stacked boxes of finished product that nobody really likes marshmallows around here. I can’t eat them, and, well, the Capt’n prefers store-bought.

I just can’t win sometimes. Damn it. So close.