Campfire Dessert Cones

The first asparagus from Mom's bed has continued for two weeks now. We have eaten asparagus six times in fourteen days — blanched, roasted, in soup, in a frittata Mom made, raw in salads, grilled over coals on Saturday. The bed will produce for another two weeks and then go to seed and we will let the ferns grow up and feed the rhizomes for next year. The asparagus is a cycle that has been on this ranch since 1995 when Mom planted the bed. The bed is younger than I am by five months. We came up the same year. I think about that sometimes when I am eating the spears.

The cattle are doing what cattle do in May. They are out on grass. They are gaining weight. The calves are running in herds of their own when the mothers are grazing. The new mothers are protective in the way new mothers are. The older cows are watchful. The bull will go in with the cows in three weeks and we will start the breeding cycle for next year's calves. The work continues.

Patrick had a steady week. The grab bars and the new medication regimen are doing what they can do. He came out to the porch every afternoon. He read his Steinbeck. He finished it Friday and started a Wallace Stegner I had bought him for Christmas. He said, Stegner is the best of them. I said, Yeah, Dad, I know. He said, You read Stegner. I said, Yeah. He said, Good. He went back to his book. The conversation was thirty seconds. I have been recording these conversations in my head all year. They are short and I am banking them.

The second book is starting to feel real in my head. I am not writing yet. I am still gathering. But the shape is more defined this week than last. It is going to be about fire — about cooking on fire, about the kinds of food that fire makes, about the men who came around my fire at the AA cookouts, about the war fires we burned in Sangin to heat coffee, about the ranch fires my grandfather burned when there was no electricity here, about the bread oven I would like to build this summer in the yard. Fire and bread and men. The bread is the second branch. The men are the third. I do not know the structure yet. I do not need to. The first book taught me that the structure shows up if you keep gathering. The gathering is the work for now.

Maggie is twelve weeks. Three months. Tara and Cole came down Sunday for a longer visit — they are starting to spread their visits out again now that Maggie is on a schedule and Tara is sleeping — and the four of them stayed from ten in the morning until eight at night. Maggie spent most of the time being passed around. Patrick held her three separate times throughout the day. The third time he held her he sang to her — quietly, half under his breath, an Irish song his mother had sung to him in 1957 and that he had not, as far as I know, sung in fifty years. He sang two verses. Mom and I were in the kitchen. We did not move. We did not go in. The song was for him and for her and we left it. Tara was in the room. Tara told me later, when Patrick had gone to bed, that he had sung the entire song twice. She had recorded the second time on her phone with the camera off and the audio on. She was going to keep it for Maggie.

Cooked Saturday a pot of beef stew for the AA cookout — eleven men, Marcus at two hundred thirty-five days — and Sunday a slow-roasted pork shoulder, twelve hours in the smoker, served at six in the evening to the family. Patrick had three slices. Cole had four. Tara had three. Mom had two. I had three. Maggie watched us eat. She is not eating yet but she is watching. She is starting to see us as people who do things. We are people who eat together. She will know that early. The fire helps. The pork helps. Patrick singing to Maggie helps most of all. The week ends. The first cutting is four weeks out. The grass is up. The work is the work.

The pork shoulder was twelve hours of smoke and patience, and by the time it came off at six the fire had already done its deepest work — pulling people to the table, slowing the afternoon down, giving Patrick a reason to sit long enough to sing. Fire has been on my mind as a subject all year, the way it organizes people around itself, the way it makes things that cannot be made any other way. These campfire dessert cones are a small thing, the kind of thing you make at the end of a long outdoor day when the coals are still going and nobody is ready to go inside yet. That is exactly where we were Sunday evening. Maggie watched. The rest of us ate.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 waffle ice cream cones
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
1/2 cup crushed graham crackers
1/2 cup peanut butter chips (optional)
6 squares heavy-duty aluminum foil (roughly 12x12 inches each)

Instructions

Prepare your coals. Let your campfire or grill burn down to medium-hot coals. You want steady, even heat — not open flame — for wrapping the cones without scorching.
Fill the cones. Stand each waffle cone upright and layer in the fillings in any order you like: chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, strawberry slices, crushed graham crackers, and peanut butter chips if using. Pack them generously but leave a little room at the top so the foil can seal.
Wrap tightly. Place each filled cone in the center of a square of aluminum foil. Bring the edges up and fold them over twice to seal the cone completely, leaving a small dome of air at the top so the fillings have room to melt without being crushed.
Cook over the coals. Set the wrapped cones directly on the coals or on a grill grate above them. Cook for 8—10 minutes, rotating once halfway through, until the chocolate and marshmallows are fully melted. You can check one after 8 minutes by carefully peeling back the foil.
Cool slightly and serve. Remove from the heat with tongs. Let the cones rest for 2 minutes before unwrapping — the filling holds heat. Peel back the foil, hand them around, and eat them straight from the cone over the fire.

Nutrition (per serving)

Campfire Dessert Cones — The Fire That Gathers Us