This week, in addition to making some of the most delicious homemade Caramel Corn that I have ever eaten, I had so much fun cataloging all the fun memories that feature popcorn. There were too many to even touch on throughout the podcast, so I thought that I would hit you up with some of them here.
Of course, as they do for most of us, popcorn and movies just go hand in hand. As a kid, we absolutely NEVER got the food at the movie theater. I didn’t realize people actually did that until much later in life. The childhood fun of avoiding the food lines is so ingrained in me that to this day, when attending a movie I still carry the largest purse that I own and first hit up the Dollar Store (or the no longer a Dollar Store) before heading to the theater. This way, for just a few bucks I can stuff my purse full of a variety of goodies to enjoy during the film. My daughter always insists on getting the cookie dough bites and I typically go for some milk duds. But when I was a kid, before heading to the theater, we would get out the old avocado green popcorn popper and a brown paper bag from Chief Supermarket and get to popping. Two full popcorn poppers and a lot of salt later, we were ready to take our grease-splattered brown bag of goodness and head on out to the movies. This ritual was the same whether we were catching a flick at the drive-in or at the regular theater.
Popcorn was a regular Sunday night treat in our house as well. What goes better together than a giant bowl of popcorn and Angela Lansbury in “Murder, She Wrote”? I can hear the theme song playing as we ran around to all get situated with a popcorn bowl in hand before the show got started.
Popcorn and Christmas are also synonymous! While my family used gold garland to wrap around the tree - always in a drapey up and down style as that was clearly the prettiest - I have heard that some families would string popcorn and use that instead or even in addition to the beautiful golden delight that is garland. I was lucky enough to get to try my hand at stringing popcorn once. I was excited and went in with the plan to eat as much as I strung. I got my needle and string and added on 3 then 4 and 5 pieces of corn. I sat back to admire my handiwork and holy crap, I’m going to have to string 8 million pieces of popcorn to make enough to show up on a tree! What is all the fuss about this?!?!?! This is time consuming madness!!!! At a moment like this there is not much more you can do than eat popcorn….so I stuck a few pieces in my mouth. Ug! This isn’t the popcorn I am used to!!! This is air popped with no oil and no salt, it’s plain popcorn and I don’t like it!!!! And thus closed my only stringing popcorn experience, one I will never forget!
Another holiday that I think is closely linked to popcorn is Halloween. Halloween is synonymous with popcorn balls! Did you get these baseball sized delicacies when you were a kid? I remember them mostly arriving with some student to a school celebration. Individually wrapped in a paper bag that allowed them to become both stale and hard as a rock.
So as it turns out, having written these all down, while I have a lot of memories of popcorn, they are certainly not all of the delicious variety! Turns out it doesn’t seem to matter. The styrofoam flavored memories are just as strong and fun as the tasty ones. Clearly they weren’t when they happened but time and distance have a remarkable way of dimming a yucky flavor.
To avoid a yucky flavor and create a happy popcorn memory for yourself, try out some Oven Baked Caramel Corn and maybe add in a holiday flair by throwing in some holiday M&Ms or some sprinkles. Regardless, we wish you a happy, fun and delicious Christmas!