joegoda | In case you wondered....

I didn't do much today. I made about 2 dozen plus molasses cookies and looked up a recipe for home made Cracker Jack - which I did. It's from a page about Baseball, oddly enough. Or maybe not so odd, to the "Take me out to the Ballgame" fame.

The interesting thing is that it contains a recipe for homemade microwave popcorn... something I knew could be done, but never really looked into. Think of it... a low calorie snack you can make at home, take to where ever they have a microwave, for about a 20th the cost of storebought microwave popcorn.

************ MicroWave Popcorn! Bonus! *********************
1/2 cup unpopped popcorn (this will make the end result super-caramelly; if you want it less sticky, use 2/3 cup unpopped popcorn)

4 teaspoons olive oil (5-6 teaspoons for 2/3 cup popcorn)

1 brown paper sandwich bag (Use the large size, if you can find it)

1 piece of adhesive tape

Put the popcorn in a brown paper bag (if you're using 2/3 cup, you might want to split it into two paper bags), pour in 4 teaspoons of olive oil (or more for the larger amount), and close the bag with a piece of tape. Heat it on high in the microwave for 3 minutes. Put it in a bowl.

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1/2 cup shelled peanuts (Spanish if you have them)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1 tablespoon molasses (you can use 2 tablespoons if you love molasses)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Get popped popcorn.

Add the peanuts to the popcorn.

For the caramel, heat the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, molasses and salt in a pan on the stove until the butter is melted and the sugar is smooth and not grainy anymore. Pour this mixture over the popcorn and peanuts, stirring well. Pour it all onto a cookie sheet and place in oven for 10-12 minutes, stirring once or twice. (It will be gooey and wet.)

Let air dry until crisp, then store in an airtight container until the first pitch.

(The cookie sheet will look dauntingly dirty, but hot water will easily erase all traces of sticky caramel sauce.)

Tomorrow, I think I'll get out and do some shopping or something. Today, I was pretty darn tired.