Monday, November 10, 2008

Popcorn

I love popcorn. I always have. It was tragic for me to have braces for 4 years as a teenager because I wasn't supposed to eat popcorn (I snuck some every now and then anyway...). Microwave popcorn came out when I was a kid (along with microwaves), and I thought it was the best thing ever. I ate it almost every day for awhile. In college, one of the things I took with me to school was an air-popper for popcorn. Movie popcorn is my favorite, though. With butter. Extra butter. One of my favorite most recent evolutions in the movie theater is the "pour your own" butter machine. Mmmmm...and yes, I know it's like eating pure cholesterol. Luckily, I only go to the movies a few times a year.

Anyway, I digress. I'm actually going to write about burned popcorn. And how much I hate it. I would prefer a bag that is half-popped than a bag that has a little bit burned. And there are few things worse than the smell of burned popcorn. In college, we used to smell burned popcorn in the dorms all the time. I always assumed it was because everyone liked popcorn as much as I did but were too stupid to figure out how to keep it from burning (although...I shouldn't give college freshman girls too much credit...we had one set the fire alarm off in the dorm when she put a pop-tart in the microwave for 2 minutes and it exploded). When I became an RA my senior year, I was told that people burn popcorn to mask the smell of Pot. I was shocked...but it made sense that our hall always smelled like burned popcorn...I was (am?) so naive.

So...people seem to have issues with burning popcorn in my office as well. Although people are free to do what they like on their own time around here (no drug testing) ...drugs are not allowed in the office. So, that means that people really are burning popcorn out of stupidity. Seriously? Just take it out early. One friend of mine put a mini-bag in and then hit the "popcorn" button on the microwave without selecting a size. It caught on fire. Today, someone must have burned another bag because it was super stinky! I guess I just don't understand how people can repeatedly burn popcorn...what a waste of a beautiful thing!

2 comments:

Rita said...

My friend Clay makes jokes about how he can achieve "The Perfect Pop" every time. 'To minimize the number of unpopped kernels without increasing risk of burning and scorching the whole bag.'

It's not true. I beat him once. But I do find it funny that it's important enough to him that he has a "scientific method".

Lauren @ mostly i run said...

I could smell yesterday's burn from my office.

And this morning, I was concerned my oatmeal would be flavored with the essence of charred popcorn!