Homemade Popcorn and Handmade Garlands

I love decorating my living room with food things during the Christmas season:  Popcorn garlands, painted gingerbread cookies, strings of colorful Cherios, and candies candies candies!

So the week after Thanksgiving, this is probably what I will be doing on my free time at home:  Making a giant batch of popcorn, and stringing and eating this giant bowl of popcorn while watching Christmasy movies.  This year, my boyfriend and I just started a low-carb diet 2 weeks before Thanksgiving (and then we cheated hugely on it for a week surrounding Thanksgiving), so I limited myself as to how much I ate out of my popcorn bowl!  So far we have watched the first and second Die Hard, Jim Carrey's Christmas Carol, Home Alone 1, and Miracle on 34th Street while putting up and preparing Christmas decorations.

The popcorn garland is super fun to do and it looks so adorable especially if you hang it on your tree along with some Gingerbread cookie ornaments.  I am still working on my ornaments, but those pictures will come later in the season.  But here is how to make homemade popcorn whether you want to eat them or string them!  Its much better than the stuff you get from the microwave bag!  Not as good as movie-theater popcorn though...

Things you need:
- Deep pot with a lid (Heavy pots work better than light pots.  The best tasting popcorn will come out of a well-seasoned cast iron pot; However a heavy cast iron pot will require stronger arms because you have to pick up the pot and shake the popcorn during one of the steps.)
- Canola oil
- Unpopped popcorn kernels
- Butter
- Salt

Directions:


1.  First you pour canola oil to the bottom of your pot - just enough to have a thin layer throughout the entire pot bottom.

2.  Put the stove on medium high setting while you throw in some kernels.  How much kernels?  Just enough to cover the bottom of your pot with a  single layer of kernels.  Now give it a good quick stir with a wooden spoon so that all the kernels are evenly coated with the oil.








3.  Put the lid on!  You should start hearing popping sounds start within a minute.  It will first be slow, then it will go crazy in the pot!

4.  Once you have heard popping sounds for around 20 seconds, LEAVE THE LID ON, put on some oven hits, pick up the pot and shake it up a little.  Repeat the shaking ever 15 seconds or so so that popcorn doesn't stay at the bottom of the pot and get burnt.

5.  Turn off the fire and remove pot from heat once you hear the popping slow down.  Cast iron pots hold their heat better than lighter pots so if you have a cast iron pot you might want to turn off the heat once it gets to 1 pop every 1 second.  For a regular pot you can turn off the heat once you get to 1 pop every 2-3 seconds.  (Its hard for me to say exactly when you need to turn off the heat because it really varies depending on the heaviness and type of pot you are using and how hot your stove is, but experiment with it and you will find that perfect timing for your perfect batch of popcorn).  But once you turn the heat off, don't open the lid yet!  Keep shaking the pot with the lid on until you hear one pop every 5-6 seconds then you open the lid and pour the popcorn out into a bowl.

It is shockingly easy to burn popcorn.  At first you might be leaving it on the heat for too long resulting in burnt popcorn or taking it off too soon resulting in lots of unpoped kernels; but keep playing with it because its worth it!

6.  Melt some butter on the stove or in the microwave (how much?  How buttery do you want your popcorn?!  Generally I use about 3 tablespoons of butter).  Pour the melted butter over your popcorn while gently tossing the popcorn so that the butter is evenly distributed.

7.  Toss some salt in there!  Toss the popcorn to mix.  There are also a bunch of different popcorn flavorings you can pick up from the store (we got a bunch from William Sonoma for Christmas last year from a friend), but just butter and salt is delis!!!

8.  Want to make a garland?  Needle and thread and just string it up!