Pickle Fails
So, the most recent pickles didn't work out quite like I hoped. One, I executed flawlessly. The other I screwed up horribly.
The Full Sours came out as advertised. Fully Sour. Too sour to enjoy and I didn't like the flavor of the mixed pickling spices. I did everything correctly, I just didn't like the final pickle. Neither did Aine. Neither did anyone at Poker Night. Except for Kwstas. He's Greek. I sent the jar home with him.
So, the habañeros that almost killed me. I had them fermenting in the pantry, which turned the pantry into a box full of pepper spray. Aine refused to go in there. The animals would run and hide when I opened the door. I went in to check them the other day and apparently I didn't chop them fine enough. The pepper pieces separated from the water.
I would have liked to have saved the jar, but I didn't have the Hazmat suit necessary to wash them out. So I tossed them. I'll try again with a less aggressive pepper.
Popcorn Again
We're trying to wean ourselves from the microwave as much as possible. So we've started doing popcorn old school. On the stove top.
Popcorn and Illinois have a special relationship. It's the state snackfood and one of the state's major crops.
It's also one of the oldest staple crops in the Americas. Archaeologists have found popcorn dating back to 3600 BCE in a domestic caves in South America. That means they're almost twice as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us. When the pyramids were being built, these kernels were already a thousand years old. The archaeologists were able to pop and eat them.
Popcorn may have been the main food source for the Aztecs before flour corn was domesticated. They even had a word, totopoca, which means the sound of many kernels popping. You know the popcorn garlands we make at Christmas? The Aztecs invented that. They made popcorn garlands to adorn statues of the rain god Tlaloc. You can see a statue of Tlaloc just over the Texas border in Ciudad Acuña. Be sure to take some popcorn with you if you go.
The first popcorn machine was invented in Chicago in the 1880s. In the 1890s in Chicago, the Rueckheim Brothers developed a process for coating popcorn in caramel, then applying oil to keep the kernels separated. They started selling them in waxy boxes and named them Cracker Jacks. Almost a decade later, Vaudeville songwriter Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me out to the Ball Game" after reading an advertisement on the subway. He wrote the popular snack into chorus, giving them free advertising until the end of time.
Cheaper than dirt, popcorn was a common meal during the Great Depression and a popular snack during the sugar rationing days of World War II. Today, in the US, one billion pounds of unpopped kernels are sold every year. 70% of these are consumed at home.
Here in Jabboland, we're happy to carry on the tradition.
On the Stove Top
When a kernel reaches an internal temperature of 356 degrees, the starch and water turn into a foam that expands outward with a pressure of 135 PSI. The liquid foam congeals into a solid within milliseconds, producing what popcorn afficionados call the flake. The flake can develop into one of two configurations: the obvious Butterfly or the rounded Mushroom.
Here's how it's done:
Put a little bit of oil in a pan and add a single kernel. Turn on the stove.
For a single serving you only need about two tablespoons.
Add a pinch of salt.
Wait for the first kernel to pop.
Once it does, add the rest and let science take its course. You'll want to shake the pan a little, to make the flakes move up and the unpopped kernels move down.
Voila! A healthy, delicious, filling snack. With no additives or chemicals or mad scientist creations that taste like butter but aren't.
The image is misleading. That's a deep bowl. Two tablespoons equal half a bag of popped microwave popcorn. A quarter cup equals one bag popped. Another difference is, when you pop it on the stove, you have one or two leftover kernels. Total. Instead of several dozen. I've popped the leftover kernels from a microwave bag on the stove and gotten almost as much popcorn as I got out of the microwave. So when you pop it in the microwave, you're eating half of what you pay for and throwing the rest away.
Parting Shot
It's dangerous to go alone.
Take this.
Well, excuse me, Princess.
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