Brown baggin' it...

I am grateful that little things still have the power to impress me. I wanted to share with you one of those amazing little things that is dumb simple, but may even be able to change your life for the better. My kids have a love affair with popcorn. Cleo is not really a great eater of anything not covered in butter or salt, so, by those parameters, popcorn is pretty much manna from heaven to her. The kid can put away a large bucket of popcorn at the theater and still find time to bat your hand away if she thinks you are taking an inappropriate share. Flynn seems to be following her lead and popcorn is one of the most requested snacks and treats in our house. I shuddered when I first heard the awful stories about people going to the emergency room with mysterious breathing problems only to find out that the culprit was their daily bag of microwave popcorn laden with chemicals and fats that stick to lung lining and other precious innards. Yuck! After that, I switched to the healthy Newmans, 0 trans fat variety, but it is expensive and made Cleo root around to find the "buttery, yellow" ones which equalled a lot of waste and a big mess.

Enter my brother in law Brooks telling me offhandedly that you can pop raw kernels in your microwave in a simple brown paper bag! What? Maybe I'm late to the show on this, but I'd never heard of it. I looked online and found loads of recipes and instructions. And here I am months later ready to tell you....stop buying chemical laden, expensive, packaged popcorn and pop your own! No air popper or other contraption required. All I do is scoop 1/4 c. raw kernels into a regular brown paper sack, fold the top a few times and set it to pop. In my microwave, my "popcorn" button cooks it just right at about 2:00. Once it is done, I put it into a bowl and pour a couple tablespoons melted unsalted butter and some sprinklings of kosher salt. It is delicious and tastes so much better than the store variety. If you want to go even more upscale, this recipe from Food Network's Alton Brown is delicious too. The olive oil really changes the flavor.

And while I'm telling tales of culinary revolution, another little joy we've discovered at our house is juicing oranges. Years ago for Christmas my in-laws gave us a small juicer designed for citrus only. It was one of the best gifts I've ever received! 10 years later and it's still in great condition. Lately, I've been filling a big basket of navel oranges and placing it on the counter. Every few days the kids have a heyday juicing a big pile. It is a great project to keep their little hands busy. They can last 30 minutes doing this which is seriously amazing in my book. (The towers of halved oranges turn out to be pretty fun stacking toys and provide counting practice too!) Plus the juicing infuses my kitchen with the smell of a much warmer clime, something I'm really appreciating at this point in a snowy, cold winter, and it gets us all a good dose of healthy vitamin c.

Like I said, little things.... but more and more I find that is what the joys of life really are about: simple pleasures and new discoveries.