Everyone Is Entitled To My opinion- On Popcorn

Dear Friends,

      Everyone enjoys a good meal, I know I do, breakfast; Cream dried beef over the hash browns with buttered toast on the side, or two fried eggs with home fried potatoes and scrapple. Lunch a big bowl of chili with chopped onions and shredded cheese and a hot dog. Dinner meatloaf with red beans and rice on the side how about you? Familiar comfort food, I’m sure you can come up with many more “comfort main meals” but what about when you just want something to snack on? Cookies are good, fresh baked around Christmas, cakes and pies are nice but more of a dessert fare, ice cream is always good but doesn’t always travel well, puddings and Jell-O just don’t cut it for me. So what comfort food sounds good to you? For me I remember growing up and the special snack of the night was Popcorn, popped over the camp fire, fireplace, or on the stove. One year my grandmother found kernels that popped in colors, add salt and melted butter. There were years we sat around with a needle and thread and strung those tasty morsels to hang on the Christmas tree.

The theater had a machine that for a dime popped directly into your bag, sadly no salt or butter, the evening shows offered larger bags (or cardboard cups) of popcorn that they would, if you wished, add theater butter, a mix of butter flavored oil. The drive INS had a larger version of this with lots of buttery topping that you and your date could share while watching the movie. How many of us got hooked on Jiffy Pop, peel back the cardboard top, shake it over a hot burner on your stove and watch the foil under that top rise as the crispy morsels popped. Today you remove the cellophane wrapper, place it in the microwave and voila, in three minutes or less. The food stores have shelves and shelves of pre popped pop corn in bags with assorted flavors; garlic, sea salt, pepper, onion, bacon flavored to name a few.

Single serve bags to party size, how easy it has become to just sit back, tear open a bag and enjoy, a ball game on the couch, late night movie in bed, listening to music, or sitting quietly reading a book. Pop corn, it’s been around longer than ice cream, baked pies, chocolate chip cookies, Native Americans enjoyed it too they called it Popped Maze. When you think about it maybe it should be called Popped Amazing.