I love this stuff. I love it air popped, microwave popped, popped from a pan on the stove, at the movies, or in those little metal things that you can put over the fire. I love it buttered, salted, with cheese, with lemon pepper salt, caramelized, toffeed (is that even a word? well i love it), even plain. Any way you can serve it, I will eat it.

I ate it for dinner tonight. That's one thing I kind of regret - eating a cookie for breakfast, and popcorn for dinner. Whenever we have kids I will have to get better eating habits or they will turn into 5,000 lb monsters. I think my love of popcorn definitely comes from my mom. I can remember her getting bags of cheese popcorn from Krogers and after eating it, my fingers would be completely orange and i would have to suck on my fingers to get all the cheesy goodness off. There's nothing quite like Krogers cheese popcorn.

My mom also had a specific pot she would use to pop it on the stove growing up. I don't know if she ever used that pot for anything else but popcorn, and boy did it always turn out super tastey. It had a specific taste because of that pot.

I loved when she would make caramel popcorn. She would always pop the corn in the pot, then make the caramel and toss it all together in a paper bag (from the Meijer's grocery store). She would lay it out on the dining room table and we would all walk in and out of the dining room throughout the night grabbing handfuls of caramel popcorn. Those were the good old days.


In another random note: I saw this picture in someone's facebook account. For those of you from MI, this is the HUGE Santa Clause at Bronners (the most amazing christmas store EVER). Thought you might like to see what happened after a storm (i hope they were able to put him back together):

Notice the head behind the tree

I ate a $75 piece of steak. And it was DELICIOUS. Was it amazing because i didn't have to pay for it? NO - it was amazing because it felt like it MELTED in my mouth. Talk about never wanting to leave the restaurant.

I had the opportunity to go to Las Vegas last week for a couple days for work. Vegas is full of many of my favorite things - awesome shows, the Rainforest Cafe, amazing hotels, and H&M. It is also full of many of my NOT SO favorite things. I don't want to talk about those.

I stayed in the Palazzo hotel while I was there - it's attached to the Venetian and it is BEAUtiful. I stayed in one of the suites and it was definitely sweet. I had three TV's, a remote for the curtains for the window, a jetted tub (with a tv in the bathroom so I could watch while I was taking a bath), and stale gummy bears in the cupboard. The hotel was great, and I had a nice time sleeping in a humungous bed all by myself - although I stayed to one side, so I could have had a smaller bed. One thing I didn't like were the towels. They felt like sandpaper on my face, which no one likes. If I could change one thing it would be the towels (oh, and the stale gummy bears that i had to eat for dinner one night because it was too late for room service).

The night before I left to come back home, my boss took some of us to eat at The Cut. It's a restaurant by Wolfgang Puck, and it was awesome. I don't think I will ever eat like that again. I decided to go all out and order a 10 oz. New York Strip that was from a cow from asia. I guess they feed it special stuff to make the meat so tender. I think they also soaked it in butter for weeks, because i felt like I was going to have a heart attack after eating half of it. I couldn't even finish it because it was so rich! I wanted to bring the other half home for Jake to try, but I didn't think it could last that long - and the people in the airport security might look at me weird for bringing a doggy bag with a piece of steak in it.

I also walked to H&M that's on the vegas strip. I usually find tons of things that I LOVE and can't live without, but I walked away with only one pair of gray tights. Talk about lame. That store was so tiny and full of flourescent clothing. I could close my eyes and still see the bright pink and green clothes. I am not big into the eighties - it's not really my style, although I did try to wear a side pony tail in college one night (low on the side, so it looked halfway normal) but i still looked like an idiot. Anyways, i wish I could have gone to the HUGE H&M store further down on the strip, but I didn't feel like getting in another taxi and hearing sob story about how bad the economy is in Vegas - i swear the taxi driver took a HUGE detour on the way from the airport to my hotel so that he could get paid more.

Vegas was fun, but I am now looking forward to Disneyland. And YES - i am going to get a pair of mickey mouse ears and take pictures at EVERY attraction. You have THAT to look forward to...