Our Favorite Christmas Present

We got any number of very wonderful and exciting Christmas presents (some from readers of this blog) and while we appreciate all of them so much, there's one that we love just a little bit more than the others. It's the Red Whirley Popcorn Popper. It pops 8 natural servings of popcorn in less time than the microwave can pop a mini-bag full of chemical-laden fake corn (about a minute and a half on our stove. We use 1 tbs of regular old Wesson oil to make a full pot, reducing the fat and calories but not the taste.

Our red whirley came with a recipe book. We haven't tried any of them yet. But our whirley also came with my mom from Ohio and she makes this delicious caramel corn recipe:

Ingredients
2 cups butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Karo Syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (mom uses a quick pour more)
lots of popped corn (6-7 quarts)

Place popped corn in a large shallow roasting pan (the aluminum foil turkey pans work well. We wash it and reuse it.) Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
Mix the first four ingredients together in a saucepan and cook for about five minutes. Add the baking soda and vanilla and stir until fully mixed. Pour the mixture over the pop corn and bake for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes or so.
Much better than Cracker Jacks.