Popcorn!

My children think popcorn magically appears from a little brown bag that I put in the microwave.  Charlotte always asks me what those "seeds" are at the bottom of the bowl when we finish eating -- no matter how many times I explain it to her, she still refuses to believe that popcorn comes from exploding kernels.  I even looked up slow-motion videos of popping popcorn on the web, but she just said "oh" and scampered off to play somewhere else.

When we ran out of the microwave popcorn, I decided to dust off the old air popper and show them a better illustrated way to get their favorite treat.  They were suspicious right from the start.

After asking me 4,000 times whether the popcorn was done yet, we finally got some action.

Then we learned why the bowl needs to stay in place under the popper.

Charlotte ate a couple of pieces and then declared it to be unfit for her consumption.  She refused to even touch it after I poured some melted butter on it.  She requested the "good kind of popcorn that we usually have."  When I told her this was it, she stormed off grumbling about how Mommy needed to go to the store to get her the kind of popcorn she liked.  Peter had a great time dumping a small bowl of it onto the floor, then picking it up and placing it on the chair.  He then licked some of it directly off the chair like a dog.  Thank goodness I gave him the bowl of popcorn before I added butter.

Even though I loved the book Popcorn from my childhood,  I had to conclude that I had grown far fonder of the microwave version.  I dumped the soggy batch into the trash and we had some crackers instead.