How Do I Hate Thee, Popcorn? - Let me count the ways...

When the husband envisions the best solution to his own weight loss he can't seem to get beyond two criteria: low-calorie and bulk. Vegetables fit the bill, and no one seems to have anything bad to say about eating large quantities of them. More vegetable are always a good thing.

However, he has re-discovered the joy of the bulky-sized, pseudo-vegetable snack called popcorn. In the past he has gone on microwave popcorn kicks. Now we have a new version.

As readers may recall, I have had plenty of negative references to eating corn, in all its forms. And, as I've said before, I don't consider corn a vegetable. It is a grain--a grain that I witnessed throughout my country-girl youth being used effectively to put bulk on our cattle and hogs, fattening them for market.

Well, the husband, who is getting started once again in this new year with a commitment to an on-line calorie-counting program (with sharing and friends), is quite taken with our hot-air popcorn popper. It was a Christmas gift from daughter Erica, two years ago, just before I was trying to get serious about a low-carb plan for the next year. I mumbled  "thanks a lot" and never opened the box.

 A few weeks ago, we opened the box: A Pandora's box of evil potential popping. The Presto gourmet hot-air popper is impressive. Here is a short video of it in operation:

The husband sprays a yukky fake butter spray on the popcorn as it pours out, adding SALT and Equal later. If he feels he must crunch on something to satisfy some lingering oral complex, a probable consequence of inadequacies experienced in infancy, then it is an inexpensive and low-calorie choice, especially in this oil-free version.

But...does it taste like anything? Does it get stuck in your teeth? Does it have any nutritive value? Does it make you hungrier? Does it smell up the house? Does it spill all over? Is it even something a human should eat?

Yesterday I stepped on a kernel with the middle of my heel in the kitchen. (Emitted bleeping sounds omitted.) Sometimes kernels popped and unpopped fly out from this over-enthusiastic appliance, full of really hot air. There is enough popcorn under the husband's tv chair to feed a mouse for a month. Sometimes the popped pieces find their way all the way down the hall to the bathroom.

 I hope he soon tires of this snack. A good thing it is not.