It’s because they started selling them at Aldi. Apparently they are cheaper than they cost locally in Milwaukee, even.
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tricking into eating a chip butty
not scientifically possible- may as well talk of sneaking a black pudding and some tripe down 'em while you’re at it. maybe a piece of parkin for afters.
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blood sausage is pretty good though
and I have to go to Pittsburgh next month for the first time in like 14 years so I was looking forward to having primanti bros again which is basically an American chip butty
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it would be a psychological trick, something like “fear not the excesses of virility once ye partake, the average UK man eats 4 of these a day and the NHS is inventing new sexual disfunctions as rapidly as it can try to keep up with all the physical issues created from the aforementioned. banned in Canada they are”
man would beat down the door of Snax Cafe to buy a brace methinks
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Give me the pretzels
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started this but i realized it would be kind of redundant if i think most fruits are either S or A rank idk. i’m a huge fruit fan… gotta eat fruit at least once or twice a day imo
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As of today I’m under 240 lbs.
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My wife swears by Jupiter
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I do not particularly enjoy Sprite + Tea
It’s drinkable but after this bottle I’ll never seek it out again
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I’m drinking 100% cranberry juice for the first time and it is so good, a fantastic mixture of sour and bitter.
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Hojicha with no sugar, soy milk, or nothing. Just sipping on toasted leaf water. I’m in my unsweetened era.
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just roasted some golden beets and now i need all the beet recipes. what are your favorite beet-based dishes
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This one is messy but it was my favorite veggie burger recipe for years. I’m going to make it again this week and see if I still like it.
The saltiness of the grilled halloumi goes do well with the beets. And the walnuts add a great crunch.
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oh that second one sounds so good I hope I cna pull it off
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I’ve been…uh, eating popcorn, recently. I dunno, just been in the mood. I currently only care about butter flavor.
Jolly Time Blast-O-Butter is the best microwave bag popcorn. Ok, now that we agree on this fact we can continue on to more important matters.
I’ve tried various non-purpose-made microwave-safe vessels for cooking loose kernels in oil, and had results less satisfactory than store-bought bags. I understand that the purpose-made silicone poppers can deliver good results, but currently I do not care about that anymore. Because I have transitioned over to…the stovetop.
Look did my wife against my advice buy one of those instagram Our Place pans with the integrated wood spatulas and poorly thought-out accompanying holes that vent directly out onto your hand that is holding the handle? Yes. Sure. Even though we have many high quality USA built fully-clad stainless, carbon steel, enameled cast iro…anyway it does seem to work pretty good for popcorn I’ve also been using it for eggs, but that can be our secret. Lightweight, easy to shake, has a lid.
My stovetop method:
- Introduce all ingredients to cold pan
- Turn up fire either all the way or only halfway. It doesn’t seem to matter? Do whatever you want.
- Shake/move pan semi-continuously
- When the popping begins in earnest, turn heat all the way to lowest
- When popping is done, pour out into big bowl
Results: satisfactory. If you don’t fuck it up, few unpopped kernels and no burning, ime. I have also tried the method of preheating the oil with a single kernel until it pops and then adding in the remainder. Also works fine and I can’t tell the difference.
I have tried these various popcorn enthusiast products:
Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theater Butter Topping Oil
Used as both a cooking medium and post-cook flavoring topping. In both regards it seems to impart little flavor. It is soybean oil. Not worth it.
Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popcorn Kernels, Original Yellow
Seems fine?
Kernel Season’s Movie Theater Butter Spritzer
This is butter-flavored soybean oil in a highly-pressurized aerosol dispenser. What is “Natural Butter Flavor”? I don’t know. You spray this on your finished popcorn. It gives the kernels an alluring sheen. Taste is noticeable and good. One time I went nuts with this stuff and had to stop eating the corn halfway through out of shame.
Jolly Time Select Premium Yellow Popcorn
These are good. I feel like they are an improvement over Mr. Bacher’s. They are pleasingly yellow. I think a lot of popcorn people prefer white. I ate this whole jar in like two weeks.
Amish Country Popcorn Rainbow Unique Blend
I’m working through a package of this now. After, I guess, becoming the kind of popcorn sicko that reads about popcorn on the internet you discover that everyone just tells you to buy Amish Country kernels. It’s like the Arches cotton paper of popcorn, don’t bother trying to do better because there isn’t. The holy see of the kernel lies in Indiana. Well turns out they’ve been selling Amish Country popcorn on the shelves of Central Market this whole time. Northerners may get to ride on the choo choo to work but at least we have Central Market god bless. The darker husks initially fooled me into believing that the results came out burnt but that is just how they look I guess they taste good. I think I’ll go for one of their “mushroom”-only varieties next time.
Amish Country Popcorn Ballpark-Style Popcorn Salt
Our old friend “Natural Butter Flavor” returns, this time teaming up with fun associates like ‘turmeric’, ‘yellow #6’ and ‘tricalcium phosphate’ and mixed up with finely-milled salt. This, as the title suggests is a flavored salt more than a flavoring with salt in it. I have been throwing it into the pan along with the oil and kernels to cook, and then add a little more at the end if needed. Tastes good, but don’t love the food coloring and whatever phosphate even if it’s fine for you whatever let’s not get into it. If you go readin’ about 'corn on the 'net you will obviously come across The Secret. The Secret is: Flavacol. Flavacol is an artificial-butter and various other chemicals -infused salt that basically every commerical popcorn server uses. Currently, I don’t want to use Flavacol because I want something better than movie theater popcorn. Anyways, I have this Amish Country butter salt because I was talking to my mom about popcorn, how I’m a real cornhole now, and how she and my dad famously always eat a lot of popcorn in their recliners before bed, etc. etc. And she goes to the pantry and pulls out this huge mason jar of orange powder and is like “DO YOU WANT THIS?!” and then was telling me yeah no duh idiot we’ve been on that Amish tip for years noob, but we’ve gone back to bags because they’re fine and we’re over it and also your father’s ulcerated colit…
Kernel Season’s Movie Theater Butter Salt
So, instead of Flavacol or the Amish Baseball Powder I’ve settled on this as my popcorn salt product. Salt, Natural Butter Flavor, Turmeric & Paprika Extract, Silicon Dioxide. It tastes good, it is milled fine, it is very yellow. It is available on-shelf for like three dollars at the HEB Montrose Market which is one block away from this computer through the pedestrian gate. Hard to argue with that, don’t know if I can do better than that.
Kernel Season’s Butter Popcorn Seasoning
Maltodextrin, Butter Blend (Whey, Butter, Buttermilk), Salt, Dextrose, Turmeric Extract, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Silicon Dioxide. I’ve settled on this as my primary post-pop flavoring. It has some salt in it, but it’s primarily a butter dust. Tbh, I think this is the secret. This is good, maybe too good. Sprinkle it on and toss while still hot. At some-point semi-recently they seem to have reformulated this product as my shaker has a label that reads “NEW AND IMPROVED!” and online reviews note the improvement in the improved reformulation.
GRB Pure Ghee Clarified Butter
In commercial popcorn service applications they used artificially flavored tumeric/yellow food-coloring dyed solid coconut oil to pop popcorn. That is the other secret. There’s lots of secrets, don’t worry about them anymore. Becuase the real secret is ghee. Sweet juice of the cow. I can see it…as clear as day…the coming of our corn dynasty. Why can’t you just cook butter popcorn in butter? Well any idiot knows butter burns. Ok fine, but why can’t you just top oil-popped corn with melted butter? Well any idiot knows butter has a bunch of water in it and that makes a soggy bowl of corn. Ghee is the answer. Cook your kernels in ghee. Top your popped corn in melted ghee if you’re a little bad boy. Damn it’s good. Anyway, this particular ghee is like basically liquid at room temp. Strong butter smell. Comes is a screw top plastic jar for $7.
Flechard Fat Cow Butter Ghee
Currently I’m working my way through a container of this French made stuff. They had it in the fridge section with the butter at the store. The guy was all like “but you don’t need to keep ghee in the fridge” really wanted me to understand that he knew stuff about ghee. In the pantry it’s a pleasant solid paste. Annoyingly, but in a charming nonsense euro way, you have to pry the metal container open with a knife like a can of house paint. Tastes great, no notes. $9 a can. Maybe need to slow down, that’s like $1 of fat per round of corn.
Wabash Valley Farms Whirley Pop
I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I’ve lied to you once again. There is another popcorn secret, the last one I promise: the Whirley Pop. Right after the corn sickos tell you about Flavacol, they’ll tell you about the Whirley Pop. It’s made in America, it’s made out of Aluminum and you can get one for like less than $40 or more for the stainless steel one. It’s a thin pot with a snap on, hinged metal lid, from which a thin stirring contraption extends down.
You crank the handle and the little stir arms agitate the un-popped kernels, allowing them to heat evenly regardless of hot spots, and once the kernels begin popping it moves and shakes the popped corn allowing the unpopped kernels trapped within the popped mass to travel back down to the hot oil and pop correctly. Crank it slowly, the whole time. My stovetop methods quoted above remains mostly unchanged other than additional cranking. I was eyeing buying one of these for a couple weeks, and began trying to explain the old fashioned, mechanized contraption to my dear old mother during the start of our popcorn bonding conversation and she went “Hey we’ve got one of those let just hold on a sec wait right here let me ge” and then she gave me her Whirley Pop. Works great thanks mom.
My grandpa started it all in 1958 when he bought land in the heart of Indiana farm country. Ten years later, he planted his first large crop of popping corn. Besides farming, he also liked to tinker with ideas, which lead to the invention of the Whirley Pop™ Stovetop Popcorn Popper, patented in 1980.
God damn, God bless and keep an Indiana Corn Tinkerer.
Ok I’m gonna go make some popcorn now, my wife caught me hunched over writing this popcorn blog post and talking shit about her pan earlier and was like “is it popcorn time?” and that was a while ago now. Thank you once again for reading my diary and I hope at least tomorrow is a good day for you.
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