Not Easier, Not Better, But Amusing

First: The History

I've never been a successful popcorn maker. Other than the microwave variety, which I'm quite good at. At which I'm quite good. Ahem.

I was sidestepping one friend bewail the unhealthy toxins in microwave popcorn, using my clear failures in the past as my excuse. When my other friend said quality seeds make a difference.

Well.

I must admit, I'd never, in all my failures, tried name brand seeds. I've always used the cheapie store brand bagged ones.

And so I said I'd give it one more shot. I had The Grand Lunar buy me some actual Orville Reddenbacher brand seeds.

And I attempted, following Orville's very own directions, to pop seeds on the stove.

And it worked fabulously.

The children were much impressed.

And ... yet. Oh, all that oil! And adding butter on top of that! I checked and oil alone, with no butter added, was already as high fat as the microwave Xtreme Butter kind. And really, it needs butter. But do WE need butter? Can we afford to eat a stick of butter a week on various bowls of popcorn?

But I didn't really want to (my goodness I'm rambling on and on, I'm still not to the point!) buy another air popper or microwave popper, just to declutter it again in a year.

So I surfed around to find if you could REALLY make oil-free popcorn without an air popper.

Most of the directions I found were for the brown-paper-bag method. I had a stack of brown paper lunch sacks! Which, doggone it, I had just decluttered in the last few months.

So ... instead of a brown paper sack ... maybe we could FOLD one. After all, Moogie The Origami Queen happened to be here. And I was anxious to try.

So we got a big piece of blank newsprint, and found origami water balloon instructions online. Well, Moogie actually already knew a better way.

Pardon the not-crisp folds in these, this is actually a re-creation, I didn't take pictures the first time around. I admit, these pix are staged. Although, I really DID re-do it.

Folding the water balloon from a not-quite-18" paper square:

And then we filled and nuked it:

And ... ta da!

It wasn't easier, it didn't work better, but it sure was amusing!

About 2/3 of the kernels popped on the 2nd attempt. It was just starting to burn when I stopped it.

I discovered with further experimentation that I can also pop them without oil in a heavy non-stick pot on the stove, lid slightly vented. Or, better yet, in the microwave in a glass bowl with a glass lid, slightly vented. That method proved to be the easiest, no shaking, I could see it pop. And that's the method I'll be using.

But that wouldn't have been as exciting to blog, would it?