Gourmet Popcorn

I received a comment a while back that I hadn't posted anything about food lately. I will call your attention to exhibit A.

Actually that's a crab and not exhibit A. The exhibit A I was looking for, I couldn't find and that crab just made me smile.

Anyhow, the reason there hasn't been much food (which I realize no one ACTUALLY cares about, but my fingers are flying over the keyboard now so there is no stopping me) is that it was really really really hot in my house over the summer. I've already posted about that and now it's happily 72 degrees so I would really just rather forget it.

Anyhow, I didn't turn on the stove all summer if I could possibly help it. Long story short, no food.

But now I can turn on the stove and even though the size of my kitchen is really starting to get to me, I'm cooking a bit more. But that's not REALLY what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about popcorn. Gourmet popcorn.

When I was a kid, we'd get "gourmet popcorn" in a tin at christmas and it was usually cheese, caramel, and regular. Not really gourmet. Now gourmet popcorn has at least a FEW more flavors. There is a place in Seattle that we go to that is like the Baskin Robbins of popcorn, 31 flavors. (I've never counted, don't hold me to that). Anyhow, it's good and I like it. (Even though I usually opt for something caramel anyhow.)

The other day, I got a groupon in my email (Actually I think it was an Amazon daily deal thing...whatever) for 15 dollars for 35 dollars worth of "gourmet popcorn". I thought to myself "hey! I could get a lot for that!" so I go to the site.

WRONG.

The smallest tin you can get is like 40 dollars and it's not very big. My heart fell, no popcorn for me. But I still looked around the site to see what flavors they had. All their flavors were caramel popcorn, drizzled with some chocolate, and coated with oreos or nuts or whatever when the chocolate was still warm. That's it! Someone just marketed the Mormon's FHE treats!

So forget you gourmet popcorn. I can do that! So I found a couple caramel corn recipes online and now all I need is chocolate and toppings. I'm going to make my OWN "gourmet" popcorn. And do you know how much a bag of popcorn kernels is at the store? Like 1.50. Do you know how much that makes? Like 50 quarts of popcorn.

So that's it. I'm gonna make gourmet popcorn and it's gonna be great. Has anyone else seen this so called "gourmet popcorn"? I really think a lot of these foods passing as "gourmet" could easily be made at home. Any ideas?