Day 8: Habit

If I have a habit that's lasted almost my whole life, it's making popcorn!  Popcorn is the bread of my life.  It's saved my bacon so many times--from major digestive upsets to hunger to the dark night of the soul.  I was hospitalized one time after becoming dehydrated from intestinal flu.  After 3 days with an IV stuck in my arm, I got sent home as cured.  Half an hour later, the unfortunate side-effect started up again, and on top of that I was starving. "To hell with this," I says, and I made a huge batch of popcorn.  Ate the whole thing, and whatever had ailed my gut vanished. 

When we raised it in our Victory Garden during WWII, we stored it on the cob in a big open wooden box at the end of the garage.  It was my job to rub the cobs together to release the kernels so that my mom could pop them in a big aluminum kettle.  She didn't use any oil or anything...just poured the corn into the kettle and turned on the heat.  We grew three kinds that I remember:  yellow, white, and dark blue.  I loved the dark blue best. It was a native variety and the tenderest and most delicious of all.  My mom always bought Jolly Time popcorn when we ran out of the home grown.  Jolly Time comes from Iowa, and her farmer relatives in Iowa probably sold their popcorn crops to Jolly Time.  She was very fond of it all. 

And so were we, meaning my brother Gene and I, who were the only two left at home in those days.  Mom poured on butter mixed half and half with Crisco, added salt, and we ate it right down to the bottom of the bowl.  Ha. We always ate the unpopped kernels, too, and licked the salt and butter off the bowl.

To be properly cured, it has to be dried after picking.  I grew popcorn one year in Bismarck. I hung the corn cobs with the husks peeled back from some hooks on the back porch.  Brilliant.  When I went out two days later, the wind had arisen during the night, rattled the cobs together, and the whole porch floor was covered with popcorn.  Yes, I did sweep it up and save it.  I didn't wash it exactly...I just picked out the leaves and blew the dust off. 

I get it now from Glut Coop in Mt. Rainier, a 20-minute bus ride away.  It costs something like 99c a pound, up from 79c a pound not too too long ago--gawd!  the inflation is gonna murther us all.  It's available every Sunday here in Takoma at the Farmers Market, but a jar of this size full would cost about $7 or $8!  I don't think so....not yet.  The jar in the picture, when full, holds about $1.40 worth.