*********************************
If you love my stories and comics, check out my Patreon page. You can support my work and get unique rewards!
And don’t forget you can follow me for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.
Tag Archives: cartoons
In Defence of Mini Marshmallows
This being the internet, I recently got into an argument with a blogger about the best marshmallows to put in hot chocolate. In her corner, giant marshmallows; in mine, mini.
It started in the comment section, as arguments to, but didn’t stay there. She published a recipe-slash-attack over on Actual Conversations With My Husband (go read it and her other stuff because she’s pretty funny when she’s not spouting hot chocolate heresy).
You see where this is going.
I am duty bound to insist that I’m right, super right, I could never be wrong, giant marshmallows are a pitiful specimen of marshmallow, Time Magazine totally called me about being Man (Person) of the Year but I turned them down when I learned about the write up and photoshoot anyway my button’s bigger and NO YOUR FACE IS A MINI MARSHMALLOW.
I won’t.
Giant marshmallows are fine. Giant marshmallows in hot chocolate are fine. (I mean, they take too long to melt nicely and due to the physics of buoyancy have an irritating habit of bobbing away from your spoon, but I guess some people like that). Toasted Giant marshmallows are extra fine. In fact, I am happy to concede them as the ideal toasting marshmallow. Furthermore, toasted giant marshmallows in hot chocolate brings pleasure on par with witnessing an enemy step in dog poo, slide ten metres, fall face first into a fountain while being filmed so that they end up online as a humorous gif. (Although over-toasting will lead to excessive floating ashes, and I do not recommend excessive floating ashes).
Mini marshmallow hot chocolate is not better than giant marshmallows in hot chocolate. I’m fine with saying that.
Because they cannot be compared. They don’t serve the same purpose. They aren’t the same thing.
You see, giant marshmallows in hot chocolate is a recipe, but mini marshmallow hot chocolate is a spell. Done right, it will grant you warmth, healing, sweetness, and probably type 2 diabetes. (But hey, everything that works has side effects.)
I will teach you how to cast it.
Make hot chocolate.
It doesn’t matter how. I don’t think there is an incorrect method of making hot chocolate. I don’t limit myself to one way of making it. Bought powder, cocoa and sugar, all milk no hot water, hot water plus milk, added chilli, added cinnamon—it’s all good. When I’m feeling fancy, I take the time to melt chocolate into milk on the stovetop.
You do you. All are equal.
Except anything with powdered milk in it. Ew.
Add mini marshmallows.
But don’t just add mini marshmallows. That’s how you do a recipe. Plop ‘em in, done. Boring. This is not a recipe.
Want to know the trick?
Lean in, I’ll whisper.
Volume.
Your goal is to get as many mini marshmallows in there as possible. Plug that mug. If you can still see hot chocolate, you’re not trying hard enough.
And, most importantly, enjoy it.
Mini marshmallows are to giant marshmallows what a kiddie pool of small denomination bills are to a couple of hundred-dollar notes sitting all dull and boring in your hand. Fundamentally equal, but you can frolic in one of them.
So, frolic.
Wait.
This step is vitally important, and you might not get it just right on the first go. You want your marshmallows to get a bit melty. How melty is up to you, but I recommend making sure there are some unmelted bits. An excellent way to achieve a good melted to non-melted ratio is to pile up the marshmallows so high that the bottom layer can melt entirely, while the top layer is safe above the hot chocolate line.
This is the game changing step. This is where we leave the safe harbour of standard hot chocolate and push out into the international waters of lawless adventure. This is hot chocolate with a peg leg and a parrot on its shoulder.
Ready?
Eat the marshmallows out of the hot chocolate with a spoon.
If you’ve done everything right, it should taste like a lighting a candle in a world engulfed by darkness. You should feel it darning the holes life has worn into your soul.
A common mistake here is to drink the hot chocolate. I can see why a person might think it’s a good idea—that is traditionally what one does with hot chocolate, after all—but there are simply too many marshmallows. The top layer of hot chocolate probably doesn’t classify as a liquid any more. Drinking it is a choking hazard.
But don’t worry, the time will come.
Repeat Steps 2 to 4 until either
a) You run out of mini marshmallows, or,
b) You feel like you’re done with the marshmallow phase of your hot chocolate experience.
Just quietly, option b is for the weak.
Drink the hot chocolate.
It’s not just a chaser for the marshmallows. By this stage it should be so gloriously sugary from all the melted marshmallows that it will taste like a hug from a rainbow.
And there you have it.
Mini marshmallow hot chocolate is not classy. It is not pretty. It scores 0 for plating every time. It does not belong on a foodie blog. It draws the wrath of food snobs (and feel free you use it as a means of identifying them among your acquaintances so you can avoid inviting them to your dinner parties).
Mini marshmallow hot chocolate is for coping. Mini marshmallow hot chocolate is for the times when your heart bleeds and your soul has been ripped open and you’re not sure if you can handle the next five minutes, let alone tomorrow. It is for dementor attacks and resisting the one ring. I make it when things are so, desperately, impossibly bad that if someone offered me a cup of tea, I would ask for it with a teaspoon of sugar.
Mini marshmallow hot chocolate got me through 2017.
And now you can make it too.
Your welcome, world.
*********************************
Some of the illustrations from this story are available in my store. You can get Fighting Mugs and Mini Marshmallow Hot Chocolate as an art print or on mugs, tote bags, notebooks and more!
If you love my stories and comics, check out my Patreon page. You can support my work and get unique rewards!
And don’t forget you can follow me for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.
The War Continues
Bath
The War of the Plants
I have never confronted my mum about this, but I’m pretty sure I’m at least 50% elvish.
Having plants around makes me feel good. It always has. When I was a kid in need of a private place to sulk, I would climb a tree. After a long hard day of being a nerd in high school, I would water pot plants. As an adult, I filled my rental’s barren courtyard with potted herbs and spent all day staring vaguely out the window at them instead of being productive.
And finally, as a homeowner, I decided it was time for trendy indoor plants.
And a cat, of course.
It didn’t work out how I imagined.
The first problem was that our brand new cuddle floof turned out to be an indiscriminate glutton. He disposed of his dinner like a vacuum cleaner. Cooking meals became an extreme sports version of keepies-off. He consumed stray bits of dental floss and munched on rubber bands—and we only know about those because we found floss and bits of mangled rubber in his vomit. Who knows what other household items he’s digested.
It became quickly apparent that the probability of him finding and taking a bite out of a poisonous houseplant was 100%.
Which ruled out all the trendy ones.
Terrified I would accidently kill the fluff-monster, I did some research before getting anything.
And good thing I did. As soon as I brought my non-toxic houseplant selections home, my fears were confirmed. Our food-hoovering, face-cuddling, foot-biting, sink-splashing, shoulder-sitting cat was also a plant-nibbler.
Our sentient scarf fixated on a Boston fern. He nibbled and nibbled. The damage began to show. We moved it around, tried to hide it from him, but he found it again and again. Over the course of month, he ate it down to twigs.
Until that point, I had everything arse-about. I had assumed the plants were a risk to the health of our furry hedge-trimmer, but in fact he was a danger to them.
Our murder-croissant moved on to an African violet. He bit the leaves off so he could play with them on the ground. It lived longer than the fern, but he knocked off leaves faster than the plant could regrow them.
I was not ready to admit defeat. My elvish heritage would not be denied. I picked out some replacements, and this time I choose robust plants, capable of withstanding a bit of casual grazing.
I had grossly underestimated his capacity to nibble.
Worse, the toebean-licker seemed to understand how much I hated it. He would use it to seek vengeance whenever I refused to feed him dinner at 2pm, stopped him from murdering my knitting, or fished him out of the toilet and shut the lid to prevent him playing in it.
It always played out the same way. First, there was a lull in cat mayhem, and I would return to my internet browsing or fantasy novel. I relaxed, but before long I would feel the seeping awareness that the silence was too good to be true. In fact, I inevitably realised it wasn’t silence at all.
Leaves were rustling.
And I would look up.
The nibbles started to show—on my nerves as well as on the plants.
I searched for new solutions. I started hanging them so the meowinator couldn’t reach them to nibble.
If I only wanted a couple of plants, I would have found my solution. But I wanted my victory to be absolute. I needed more plants, large plants, multiple per room!
I couldn’t hang them all. I needed another alternative.
Channelling my elvish wiles, and found it.
It was, I am willing to acknowledge, a little bit evil. A tad cunning. Slightly Slytherin. It betrayed a dark corner of myself I usually pretend I don’t have.
Cayenne pepper.
At the end of the day, the important thing is not my moral integrity or the state of my immortal soul, it’s not even that I got to keep my plants.
It is that I won.
Sort of.
*********************************
If you love my stories and comics, check out my Patreon page. You can support my work and get unique rewards!
And don’t forget you can follow me for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.
Cat Daydream
*********************************
An illustration based on this comic, Cat Daydream, is available in my store! You can get it as a print, or on mugs and phone cases and stickers and things.
If you love my stories and comics, check out my Patreon page. You can support my work and get unique rewards!
And don’t forget you can follow me for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.
Cat Pie Chart
*********************************
This comic is available in my store. Check it out, or browse the store!
If you love my stories and comics, check out my Patreon page. You can support my work and get unique rewards!
And don’t forget you can follow me for updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.
