I somehow missed this Huckabee moment yesterday:
I think I'm too young to have a clear sense of what a popcorn-popper is. People make popcorn in the microwave, no?
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Fried Squirrel
18 Jan 2008 11:15 am
Comments (49)
Maybe it was '70s slang for a prostitute?
People make popcorn in the microwave, no?
When Huckabee was in college?
Matt, there is this thing called history.
George Washington didn't get to the White House on the metro.
No, he meant a popcorn popper. Pre-microwave, a cousin of air-popper. A kind of dome-shaped thing, metal base with a plastic dome enclosure. You'd put a little oil in the bottom (there was a small reservoir). Then put in the popcorn kernels. There was even a little compartment at the top of the dome, where you could put a little butter that would subsequently drip down onto the popcorn as things heated up.
I think Joe Namath might've endorsed one, but I could be wrong. I'm only 38, I didn't think this item would date me so clearly!
I vaguely remember my dad being totally psyched about picking one up in the early 70s. Quite the thing for Sunday afternoon NFL viewing at the time. It was a sort of bowl-shaped covered dish that you plugged in, and indeed added some oil.
These guys have a non-microwave popping device they seem to like. Dunno how you'd fry a squirrel in it, though.
I'm wondering how they got the squirrel. Squirrels are way too fast to catch by hand, so you'd have to either trap them or shoot them. Live traps are pretty bulky, and shooting would require having a firearm, which is verboten on most campuses.
A popcorn popper is a cage-like metal oblong on a handle. You put the corn in the popper and heat it over a fire (like when you're camping) or electric mini-stove.
Now I know why Alterman refers to you as "Young Matt". Don't forget to tell Ezra.
A popcorn popper is a cage-like metal oblong on a handle. You put the corn (or the squirrel, apparently) in the popper and heat it over a fire (like when you're camping) or electric mini-stove.
Now I know why Alterman refers to you as "Young Matt". Don't forget to tell Ezra.
Yeah, I realized I was thinking of a hot air popper, too, but that makes no sense.
But why would you use a popcorn popper instead of just frying it? Isn't the advantage of the dome that it keeps popping corn from flying all over the place? Do fried squirrels pop?
Basically an electric skillet with a hemispherical bottom. I have sold them to people who say they are great for roasting coffee beans.
it's not a matter of being young, it's a matter of having non-disgusting popcorn. microwave popcorn is simply awful, even on those rare occasions that it isn't singed.
plenty of people still use popcorn poppers to make popcorn, even in the iphone age: people who want popcorn that tastes good.
You can catch a college campus squirrel by hand. I used to tag them for fun. You know, sneak up on them and touch their tail before they could run away. I could have grabbed one if I wanted to, but I don't like rabies.
They're fat, they eat out of trash cans, and they're extremely accustomed to people.
I also used to catch the ducks for fun. Its even easier. Just hold out bread, let the ducks come in, hold out bread, let them come closer, then pick one up really fast. Then you have a duck. I don't really know what they're for, but they're fun to have for a moment.
God I'm old. I know exactly what he's talking about (skillet with a dome on top, didn't need to have an oven since they had their own plug-in, seems like the dome was usually clear or transparent yellow). Actually, I was still of the stove-top popcorn. After the skillet/dome came the air popper, then came microwave which ruined popcorn...
I think MY was joking about the microwave thing. It's like when I once asked my dad who was born in the 1960's what it was like to watch Babe Ruth and Ted Williams play.
"I'm wondering how they got the squirrel. Squirrels are way too fast to catch by hand, so you'd have to either trap them or shoot them. Live traps are pretty bulky, and shooting would require having a firearm, which is verboten on most campuses.
Posted by jimBOB | January 18, 2008 11:38 AM"
Cocaine is a helluva drug.
I live in China. I think I once ate fried rooster penises on a stick (it was actually rather good, whatever it was). I find this disgusting. This reminds me of the time on O'Reilly they had one Southern Republican operative talking about his teenage sheepfucking and how for all men in the rural South, you're first girlfriend is a sheep. Can we just stop pretending that this guy is from a first-world nation?
But why would you use a popcorn popper instead of just frying it?
They weren't allowed to have stoves in their dorm rooms. If they were hungry, why didn't they just order out for pizza? Or, was Huckabee in college in the ancient days before the advent of pizza delivery?
Also, are South Carolinians such bumpkins that they'd find this story appealing? It sounds like its straight out of the Beverly Hillbillies.
God I'm old. I know exactly what he's talking about (skillet with a dome on top, didn't need to have an oven since they had their own plug-in, seems like the dome was usually clear or transparent yellow). Actually, I was still of the stove-top popcorn generation. After the skillet/dome came the air popper, then came microwave which ruined popcorn...
I think he means something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Wabash-Valley-Farms-25008-Whirley-Pop/dp/B00004SU35
And the popcorn you get out of a device like this is way better than air-popped or, God forbid, microwave popcorn. No wonder you don't like popcorn!
On some level you have to love this reverse snobbery. You half-expect Huckabee to start dissing the Long Island Republicans for wearing shoes, having all of their teeth, knowing how to flush a toilet and not knowing what a burning cross smells like (Archie Bunker notwithstanding).
Three thoughts:
1. I cook popcron in an aluminum pan on the stove with canola oil, the same way Plato cooked popcorn.
2. It amuses/saddens (there's probably a french word for this combination) me that this squirrle inccident is supposed to be a reason to vote for him.
3. What kind of loser have I become that I ignore my real work to post here everyday?
It's time for Huckster to put up or shut up. I may well have to head down to one of his last events in the upstate with a dead squirrel and a popcorn popper.
Also, are South Carolinians such bumpkins that they'd find this story appealing?
I have had a number of conversations with people describing their upstate childhood that dwelt heavily on a) shooting critters; b) blowing random things up with black powder for the heck of it.
They're just a bit, um, country.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with microwave corn popping. It's just that Orville Reddenbocker and the other mass marketers of microwave popcorn don't make an especially good product. Take gourmet popping corn, put in it a paper bag with some oil and stick that in the microwave, and it's no different than making it on the stove.
Jeez Matt, you can still buy the damn things. It took me less than a minute on google to find this:
http://www.bizrate.com/popcornmakers/cook-type--oil/products__att439857--278456-.html
and you bitch about people not doing their research in the internet age.
Boy if you guys are old I qualify for ancient and decrepit.
When I was a boy (fresh back from school walking up hill both directions in waist deep snow) you made popcorn by taking a cast iron skillet, put a small amount of oil in the bottom, add popcorn and then shake over a hot burner. When the popped corn started pushing up the lid you were done. Rarely were your results 100% successful, it you popped it too hot or too long you ended up with burned popcorn, too cool or too short and you got an unacceptable amount of unpopped kernals. Like a lot of stuff in cooking there was an art to it which is why in the sixties they introduced such stuff as Jiffy Pop. You still had to make it over a hot stove and it really wasn't as good but you could trust kids to make popcorn without risking a catastrophic kitchen fire.
And back in the depths of time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth I seem to recall an outdoor popcorn cooker where you just took the kernals and placed them in a gridded pan with a lid and popped them over an open fire. These also worked indoors but only because we didn't have smoke detectors, I wouldn't dare try this technique today.
"walking up hill both directions in waist deep snow"
No offense but I think finding this line funny has become a way of dating oneself.
Jesus, people, you don't have to be old to know what a popcorn popper is. Or what they are, since there are obviously several different kinds. Anyway, the kind with a metal base and a plastic dome top is really great, I recommend it. Get some Reese's Popcorn Salt (it's very finely ground, so it sticks to popcorn better than regular table salt), make some popcorn... you'll never go back to microwave, with its nasty, throat-coating pseudobutter nastiness. And using the popper is hardly much more work than putting a bag in the microwave.
Whoever pointed out that you aren't supposed to cook in the dorm rooms wins the thread. Anyone who has attended a public university knows the dorm food is really bad (probably goes for non-rich-kid sectarian colleges as well). But generally, only low-power, restricted-use small appliances like toasters, coffeepots and popcorn poppers are allowed in the dorms. So if you want a break from the stuffed peppers and apple brown betty in the cafeteria, you figure out how to make a hamburger or a french-bread pizza using only the allowed devices. Though in Huck's case, it might have been "in addition to", rather than "in lieu of".
What upyernoz said. Also, air popper pop corn is at least as awful as microwave popcorn.
Now I want to go out and buy a popcorn popper.
Matt,
The best way to make popcorn is on the stove. You can use an aluminum pot, but I prefer non-stick. Coat the bottom with some canola oil (I personally use corn oil, but vegetable oil or ideally olive oil would do the job). Heat it up until the oil begins to boil. Pour in some popcorn kernels and sprinkle a tiny bit of paprika on top. Let it pop and enjoy the goodness.
Parenthetical, I suspect some of it is the 'getting around dorm room regulations' factor, but from what I've been told squirrel meat is hella greasy.
This is fucking ridiculous. It's like Cletus from the Simpsons is running for president.
"walking up hill both directions in waist deep snow"
No offense but I think finding this line funny has become a way of dating oneself.
Saying, "We had to use dial-up modems, both ways!" doesn't quite do it though.
"Coat the bottom with some canola oil (I personally use corn oil, but vegetable oil or ideally olive oil would do the job). "
I used ot use olive oil, but canola works quite a bit better. More kernals get popped and they pop bigger. I think it's becasue canola heats up hotter than olive.
"People make popcorn in the microwave, no? "
I thought so too, but then we lack Heritage.
No, he meant a popcorn popper. Pre-microwave, a cousin of air-popper. A kind of dome-shaped thing, metal base with a plastic dome enclosure. You'd put a little oil in the bottom (there was a small reservoir). Then put in the popcorn kernels. There was even a little compartment at the top of the dome, where you could put a little butter that would subsequently drip down onto the popcorn as things heated up.
Don't worry about it too much. I'm only 25, and this sounds similar, though not quite identical, to what we used at home until sometime in my teens. I imagine they're still out there.
CW,
I agree with you on the canola/olive oil heating bit. I meant "ideally" only in a nutritional sense, that olive oil is considered healthier due to the structure of the fat.
By the way, if you're looking for one of those old-style popcorn poppers, check this out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=q1v52f1TrWg
The John Madden Popcorn Popper.
How does this whole discussion of popcorn not have one mention of Jiffy Pop? (For the unfamiliar, it's a little pre-packaged aluminum pan with popcorn and oil inside, with a crushed foil top. You heat the pan on the stove and the foil top expands as you pop the popcorn inside.)
Not the best popcorn, by far, but fun to make in a retro sorta way. I have Jiffy Pop in my pantry right now . . .
Bad popcorn is made pre-packaged in a microwave, Matt. Good popcorn is made other ways.
Squirrels are tasty in stews.
Kind of surprising that so few people pick up how Huck is having fun and instead went off in the minutia of popcorn poppers vs. the deliberate bizarreness of Huck's foond memories of campus squirrel fries.
This guy is dangerous in some of his beliefs, so leave Presidential politics out of this - but he has a gifted comedic touch and is a superb communicator and storyteller.
This is a guy who started out working for a multimillion-dollar TV evangelist enterprise as their main PR man and interface with secular society. He then did pastor and was so good at it he built up his congregations at two Baptist churches to among the largest in the South. In politics, he established a bond with the people and joins Clinton as the 3 time governor.
Remember that the stories of Clinton at Yale were of this country bumpkin with a Camino lined with astroturf talking about the superiority of Arkansas watermelons over Georgia ones. Then a month later, he was "the hick" that never studies, just yaks. Then he was the "hick that never studies but gets top grades". Then they find out he was a Rhodes Scholar...
Well, Pastor Huckleberry isn't as smart as Bill Clinton, but he is plenty smart and very skillful at using self-mockery to raise his brand.
Jay Leno loves him. So do several circuit comedians that rip off his material. He came to fame in 1998 as the obese Governor who could go on for 15 funny, self-deprecating minutes about how he was living in a triple-wide trailer while the Gov Mansion was being rebuilt.
The squirrel bit is use of disarming wit, much as Bill Clinton would talk to classmates about watermelons, or his game on astroturf and dangers of his white trash conquests getting rug burns - while knowing he was smarter than all but a handful of more "sophisticated" Yalies he met...
I think I'm too young to have a clear sense of what a popcorn-popper is. People make popcorn in the microwave, no?
Dude. Come on. You're only two years younger than me.
"This is fucking ridiculous. It's like Cletus from the Simpsons is running for president.
Posted by Jason C. | January 18, 2008 12:39 PM"
This is so to the point, so perfect and yet so obvious I wish I had said it. Really, Huckabee after 8 years of Bush would just be too embarrassing to bear. It's like going to bed with Rosie O'Donnell one night and the next night waking up next to the bus driver from South Park.
Neither popcorn poppers nor microwave ovens are useful technological improvements in popcorn making. Since childhood, I've made popcorn in a heavy medium sized saucepan on the stove. Put the burner on high heat, cover the bottom of the pan with olive oil, and put enough (white, not that awful cardboardy yellow) popcorn in to cover the bottom of the pan. Shake it a couple of times while its heating, and let it pop. Done properly (which is easy), it produces a full pan of delicious popcorn, much better than the microwave version, with few or no kernels left unpopped. Put some garlic powder and salt on it (and maybe some other spices to taste), and you'll have a dish which is much tastier, and much healthier, than anything from a microwave bag or a movie theater.
Get with it folks! We make our squirrel in the microwave too now.
Whoever described "an electric skillet with a hemispherical bottom" is thinking of the same popcorn poppers I remember from my late 50s early 60s childhood. I recall it now as an electric wok that has been stretched in the Y dimension and squeezed in the others.
Geez, I find I'm both old enough and hillybilly enough to understand all aspects of this.
1) Yes, when I was in college, we cooked damn near anything that could be cooked in a popcorn popper (except squirrel, which, as pointed out above, you needed a firearm to obtain).
2) Growing up, we ate a fair amount of squirrel. Wasn't good, but it was cheap. It turns out that if you just clean and fry it, it's a lot like eating rubber bands. Be sure to parboil it for a while first. Or stew it. And I'm actually from Wisconsin rather than Arkansas, so it's not like squirrel-eating is a purely Southern thing.
3) Ducks: delicious in any form. I still hunt them today. Grilled, roasted, deboned and made into soups, etc... there's no bad duck dish. Yummy.
Matt graduated Harvard in 2003.
That's 2003 - as in four years ago.
When he got out of college, Andrea Corr was...29, probably turning 30.
He's lucky he knows what a modem is - he probably doesn't except for cable and DSL "modems" - which are actually bridges and routers. Anybody remember the movie "Hackers" with the line: "It's insanely great! It's got a 28.8bps modem!"? I remember 1200 baud modems...I remember Teletypes...
It's his elitist problem. Knowing stuff the lower classes know is not in the interests of a wannabe pundit. No pundit will ever admit to being of the "lower classes".
Matt's probably never heard of a "hot pot" or a "hot plate" either, despite having been a college boy.
Nothing wrong being young - just young and ignorant.
Now I know why Alterman refers to you as "Young Matt". Don't forget to tell Ezra.
My favorite popcorn-popper does not pop popcorn. It doesn't even really provide a snack. It creates a meal. It enmeshes you in a culinary experience, as if food has stopped being mindlessly ingested and, just for an instant, is savored in your mouth, makes you aware of its flavor, and your palate's refinement. It is not the kernel made fluffy, but the triumph of fluffiness over the kernel, over salt, over artificial butter product. The other great popcorn poppers I've used guide us towards a fuller stomach, but this popcorn popper is, at its best, able to call us back to our kitchens, to the place where snack food exists as an appetizing idea, and where we, as hungry gourmands, seem capable of cooking it, and thus of sharing in its meal-time deliciousness.
Fuck those other popcorn-poppers. Fuck them with a spikey, margarine-tipped dick.
I think I'll skip the squirrel cooking adventure (I was raised in a trailer park, went many a hungry night, and it never occurred to me that i might try my hand at squirrel hunting), but now I want to pop me some stove top popcorn.
Get some Reese's Popcorn Salt
Or, save some money and get some "pickling salt". It's basically, the same stuff--superfine salt crystals of a very uniform tiny size. It's almost dusty, and sticks incredibly well to everything.
It costs 12c an ounce or less, compared to reese's popcorn salt which costs more than 3x as much.
I love this thread. I used to LOVE our hot-plate with-a-big-yellow-transparent-top popcorn popper. I remember how kneeling on chairs, us kids would watch with excitement as the kernels started to hiss and bubble, then changed color, and then--BOOM! Boom, boom, boom, boom! And the exciting moment when they filled the cover so close to the top that you thought maybe, just maybe this time mom had made a mistake and they'd pop up the lid and start spilling out the bottom!
But they never did.
Although I have to admit the butter melter was terrible. Salt wasn't a problem, but it was really hard to get an even distribution of butter in the final product.
Comments closed February 01, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I was wondering if he meant an air popper. If so, then that's really bad. You're not supposed to put oil in an air popper. I don't think I'll be voting for Huck now.
Posted by Jim W | January 18, 2008 11:32 AM