When I was around ten years old I was in awe of Alton Brown. To me he was an absolute genius, and if you are like me and have watched re-runs of Good Eats for ages you'll agree with me when I say that as a wee girl I fully felt that he deserved the Nobel prize that he wished to receive. Anyways, one episode something he said sparked my interest. If only I had known what the disastrous consequences would be! I marched out into the kitchen one morning and with the air of a mastermind. I dumped a generous serving of stale popcorn into my cereal bowl and walked over to the fridge where I retrieved the milk. Naturally I felt as if I was saving the world heaps of money, as if I was solving inflation problems everywhere, and as if I was a mighty genius, notable in every aspect as I calmly poured the milk onto that gummy stale popcorn.
I ignored the gaping stares from my siblings, after all, I couldn't possibly imagine that they being mere peasants could grasp the enormity of my epic-ocity. With a smug smile I slid a spoon under the quivering muck in my bowl and triumphantly lifted it up to my mouth as I took a big bite. As the slime slid down my throat, I also felt my smile slide off in a similar fashion. I flew up from the table and flung that horror out of the back door without a single word.
It took quite some time for me to recover. I thoroughly rinsed out my mouth and poured myself a bowl of cheerios. Though the popcorn had thoroughly tasted unbelievably horrid, I was mostly disappointed that my all time favorite TV personality had even dared to share that idea on his show.
Yet another popcorn moment that I have to share is from last year. Diane and I had wanted to string popcorn garlands for our room and we made short work of preparing everything. We settled down on our bed and started stringing all the popcorn. The sad thing is that those garlands were never completed since in the end we ate all the popcorn off while talking.
Besides those few moments, we as a family have a lot of general uses for popcorn. Here are a few of them. Do note that a few of the numbered topics are sarcastic.
- Making garlands for our tree.
- Making popcorn balls.
- Making Bibble, also known as caramel corn.
- Snacking while having a movie marathon.
- Feeding the birds with leftovers.
- Making sure to spill it all over the floor on my way into the living room.
- Managing to let it explode everywhere once out of the kettle.
- Making snack mixes with raisins and popcorn.
- Munching on it while playing UNO during the summer.
- Having it at the movie theaters.
- Allowing it get stuck in my curls because I enjoy having good taste in my hair styles.
- Eating it when I'm supposed to be making crafts..
- Blocking out the movie's annoying noise because we enjoy hearing each others' chewing.
And with the conclusion of all of those splendid ideas, I'm sure the list will have put a "pop" of inspiration into your day so that you as well as my family can all celebrate this most lovely of holidays properly.
Popcorn is so much a part of fun snacking. This Christmas we received some zebra popcorn...some of the popped kernels were drizzled both in white and milk chocolate, then added to the plain popped corn and mixed. It was a big hit. I didn't prefer the pumpkin pecan spice popcorn we also received, though. A few years ago we had peanut butter and jelly popcorn...some kernels with jelly glaze on them, while others with peanut butter. I ate a whole bowl of those. Now I'm thinking I will check Pinterest for Valentine's Day popcorn ideas. Thanks for the Popcorn Day heads up!
ReplyDeleteStale popcorn is best for stringing; we tried it once - only once - with fresh hot popcorn and it crumbled when we tried to string it.
ReplyDeleteDo your birds eat popcorn? We've never had much luck with that, and duck won't even look at it. The deer will eat it, though.