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Now with 100% less fake butter!

I’m really tired right now and I’m not up to thinking my way through a post.  So…you get this instead.  This is how I make microwave popcorn.  I’m posting this because…I’m making popcorn right now.  I have the sneaky suspicion that my friend infected me with her zombie stomach, as I have been SO. HUNGRY. the last couple of days.  It’s really annoying.  Anyway, I’m trying to use popcorn to quieten up my stomach.

Now then, I like popcorn.  I like making popcorn in the microwave.  I like making it on the stove or over a campfire too, but that takes more time.  Microwave popcorn is much more convenient.  But, I don’t like fake butter and I generally don’t like the giant portion of popcorn you end up getting from those prepackaged things.  What if you’re the only one who wants popcorn?  What if you don’t want to eat a whole bag?  What do you do with the rest?  Stale popcorn doesn’t really taste that good.  One of my roommates in college (check out her blog, she takes some rather nice photos) did find out that you can keep popcorn from going stale if you store the leftovers in the fridge.  The next time you take it out, it’s still crisp.  But…then you’re eating cold popcorn and not everyone likes that.

I get around all that by making my own microwave popcorn.  All you really need are popcorn kernels, which are cheaper to buy than the prepackaged stuff, a paper lunch bag, a microwave, and some seasoning.  I often will add in a bit of oil as well, because I’ve found that it makes the seasoning stick to your popcorn better and that you have less unpopped kernels after microwaving.  This way, you can make whatever flavor popcorn you like and as much or as little as you want to eat.  And you don’t have to fill your house with the aroma of fake butter, which I really dislike (it probably belongs in Fake England).  The procedure below will give you about four cups of popped corn.

Materials:

  • a lunch bag
  • 1/4 cup popcorn kernels
  • a few shakes of season salt (I like it because it’s salty and paprika-y, but use whatever you like)
  • 1 tsp oil (generally I prefer to use olive or grape seed, but canola works just fine too) – optional

Procedure:

  1. Dump the kernels in the lunch bag.
  2. Pour the oil over the kernels and shake the bag to coat.  Note: the bag will get oily, so I normally put it on a plate to microwave.  You don’t have to use oil at all, if you don’t want.  The kernels will still pop.  I just find that not as many of them do per given period of time.  I’ve also done this with butter, but unless you melt it first, it doesn’t really give you very good results.
  3. Sprinkle the season salt over the kernels and shake the bag to coat.
  4. Fold the top of the bag over twice to seal the bag, leaving a goodly sized chamber inside.  Some people use a staple to keep the fold in place, but I don’t find it necessary.  And yes, you can microwave a single staple.  It’s not big enough to do damage.
  5. Microwave on high until there is about 1-2 seconds between pops.  It’s about 3.5 min on my microwave.
  6. Tada!  Popcorn!

Now you can quieten up your stomach.

Engineeringoma

A good while ago, not long after I first started working, I noticed that I was having some speech difficulties.  I would often forget words, mix up my gendered pronouns, and I was starting to affect a stutter.  I was really annoyed with myself.  Forgetting words occasionally doesn’t bother me.  It happens.  But it seemed to be happening more frequently than normal.  And what was going on with mixing up my gendered pronouns?  I was raised in the US.  I may have learned Chinese first, but English is definitely my dominant language.  I never had problems with pronouns before.  And I have no idea what was going on with that stutter.  I figured, I was just tired and I just needed more sleep.  But I was wrong.

I learned that I have engineeringoma.  I am quite fortunate that I have friends who are healthcare professionals to set me straight.  My respected medical professional friend defines engineeringoma as a

cancerous growth of the engineering, which is located somewhere in the brain.  It causes compression of the ventricles and the lobes to swell up, affecting Broca’s area and thus causing stuttering.  Progressive state causes sickliness.  Growth metastasizes into all organs.  There is no cure.

When he told me that, suddenly it was all clear.  I used to get headaches (this was pre-MLC) sometimes.  They were probably one of the symptoms of the growth getting bigger and causing pressure in my skull.  It was affecting Broca’s area, an area of the brain necessary for speech production.  That probably explained my forgetting of words and stuttering.  I was getting sick more often.  I totally had engineeringoma!

Or…not really.  Sometimes my friends and I like to pretend we have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases (or really, I like to pretend that I have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases and they are more than willing to oblige me and make up said diseases for me if I find the real diseases to be not gruesome enough…then we make them even worse in banter).  But what was really funny was that I had written the definition (it’s a really good definition) on a scrap of paper and put it up on the outside of my cube wall.  One of the other noob engineers came by to talk to me one time and saw the definition.  He thought it was real.  He was having similar symptoms and he was actually sick during that time.  He came in to ask me how I found out about the disease.  Then he did a double take, probably because I looked so amused at his reaction.  He figured out rather quickly that it wasn’t a real disease.  And then he learned that my sense of humor is parched and arid and I really wasn’t to be trusted regarding these things.

Good times, good times.