I try really really hard to think popcorn is health food

I'm home today and supposed to be doing other things but I don't want to. I'm also hungry which, as we well know, is not conducive to being productive or even terribly polite to telemarketers.

There are a couple things I have as my 'go to' when a snack attack happens. Popcorn is one of those things. I've been a diehard micropop girl for a while but when I was walking through Bed Bath & Beyond last year I spied the WhirlyPop. Wow, I thought, that's retro and I think I had one in college or maybe earlier.

Flashback to popcorn in a little bowl when I was a kid, sitting on a hard plastic kitchen chair, at the front screen door, watching thunderstorms. We had gigantic, all afternoon, thunderstorms when I was a kid and we always had a snack to watch them. I used to think my mother must have cared so deeply that we be exposed to the natural world in all her glory but now that I'm a mom and as I look back, it was mother nature's DSI and I'm sure mom appreciated the babysitter.

Back to my shopping trip, I had the requisite $5.00 coupon and it was on sale so Mr. WhirlyPop came home with me.

I find I get very righteous when I have the popcorn urge, still somewhere in the back of my head I am managing to convince myself it's either health food or NOT junk food or something, whatever, it makes me happy and damnit I've lived long enough AND an interesting enough life to justify this (and anything quite frankly but that's another day)

So, the whirlypop comes out on the counter, opens it's lid - waiting.

2Tablespoons of bland oil

1/2cup of any popcorn you happen to have around get dumped in, off heat

I give it a few slow handle cranks to mix it up and pop it on mostly high heat (my recipes are hideous I know but I never pay attention)

After a minute or two, you hear the popping and stand at the stove for a whole 2 minutes, cranking the handle (so you're actually COOKING and not just NUKING something) it's all about involvement and I feel terribly involved when I crank that handle. The popping will stop and you'll open the little door and LOOK what's waiting for you!!

It's hot and dry and steamy and crunchy and popcorny. I dump it into a pretty glass bowl because I really like the look of popcorn in glass for some reason.

I season with kosher salt and a drizzle of melty butter (yes, I nuke it so the micro doesn't feel completely abandoned) and dive in... it's corn and only really a drizzle of oil so it's GOT to be healthy...doesn't it?