So much for Sugar Popcorn

I can cook! Or at least I used to think I could until I tried to make Sugar Popcorn this last Saturday. See our ward was getting together to have a Tail-gate party and they had invited everyone to bring a favorite snack to share. After hearing that my little sister was making sugar popcorn earlier in the week I thought that sounded like a good idea. Everyone likes popcorn and sugar popcorn is even better. I started digging through my very unorganized recipe box and located it between the recipes for Swedish meatballs and waffles. As I started reading through it, I noticed there was a sentence that I couldn't understand. "1/4 cube butter".. hmmm... my mind must have had a major malfunction when I was writing it down as that was one of many recipes I was trying to right down to take with my on my way to college. Did I mean 1/4 a cup or 1/2 a cube of butter? I tried calling my oldest (or am I supposed to say more mature) sister , but as she was probably watching the BYU football game she didn't pick up the phone. So I came up with the idea to call my youngest sister as she had just made sugar popcorn. Surely she would have the answer. When I repeated what I wrote down she said

"It's supposed to be 1 cup sugar 3/4 cup water, 1/2 cube of butter."

"Wait a minute. Why doesn't this match what I wrote down."

"I got the recipe from dad, who rattled it from memory."

I decided to follow the rest of the instructions she gave me along with the recipe. I couldn't do any wrong. My father was the sugar popcorn connoisseur as he had been making popcorn as long as I could remember. It was tradition in our family that every Sunday night we sat as a family watching TV and eating popcorn that dad popped. It was great. After years of experience of eating the popcorn and watching my father make it I was sure I couldn't fail. I was so wrong.

After letting the mixture boil for the 3 minutes, I took it right off the stove and poured it right onto the popcorn. That was my first mistake. If you've never made sugar popcorn before, let me give you some advice. DO NOT POUR HOT LIQUID ALL AT ONCE ONTO POPCORN! I did and trust me it wasn't pretty. The minute the hot mixture hit the popcorn, all the lovely fluffiness that is popcorn soon became a massive ball of mush. My second mistake was when I thought I needed to double the recipe. I had so much extra liquid that after the popcorn was turned into mush there was a residue of liquid sitting in the bottom of the bowl. "Well, I'll just quickly pop up some more popcorn and spread it all out," which might have worked if I hadn't had already put everything away and then had to dig it all out and wait for it to heat up to pop the corn. By the time the popcorn was made again, the liquid was already hardening. My third and final mistake had been trying to color the popcorn. Since it was going to a tail-gate party I thought I would try and color the popcorn into the lovely navy blue that is part of BYU's colors. I think I need to take a mixing colors class because the color that ended up coming out after drenching the popcorn was a very ,very ugly green color that when mixed with the remaining kernels looked like something , well, something that has turned me off from making sugar popcorn for a long time. So needless to say I'm done with sugar popcorn for awhile, unless my dad wants to come over and teach me how.