microwave popcorn
on the magic of the convenience & the fecundity of the inconvenient
In praise of the slight inconvenience,
in the name of letting the techne serve you, and not the other way around,
In honor of the highest of culinary virtues: making do with what you have,
We open this small packet (oh it’s a mini packet, James announces, when our kernel yield is meagre in proportion to our expectations) of microwave popcorn.
First, of course, creatures of the search engine, I have googled “can you pop microwave popcorn on the stovetop.”
Of course you can, Quora has assured me, why would you ever not be able to? My ancestors look down on me from heaven and wonder what has become of this human race, that cannot experiment without first consulting with the robot brain in their palm.
Have you ever opened a packet of microwave popcorn and seen its interior?
Go ahead, do it. Just cut it open.
What’s inside? Just a few kernels of regular popcorn, smushed together, unlovely, in solid climbs of some kind of saturated fat—do I dare call it butter? Because I can believe it is not.
There are two miracles here: one, that this small paper packet, filled with an unidentified fat and butter can make popcorn, when exposed to electromagnetic rays of non-ionized radiation in a closed space. We call this closed space a microwave, as a shorthand for these non-ionized electromagnetic rays, but it is properly a microwave oven.
Non-ionized rays means they will not destabilize the atoms in your food. This means that the kernel will explode into clouds of white but you and your house will not go into nuclear meltdown or go up in a mushroom cloud.
This is astonishing: the materials of earth reworked in little space.
The second miracle is that we have what we need: we open up the microwave-ready mini popcorn packet (we do not have a microwave oven) and we scrape it into the hot oil in the pot. One small exploding kernel hits me in the cheek. (This is one very sure way to know the oil is hot enough.)
How marvelous, that even in the midst of wonders, we can cobble something simple, handmade and homely, together.
The inconvenient not foreclosed on by our conveniences.
Sweet Unrest in the Streets
This is a very Jesuit-y Advent! And I invite you to join in the jesuitical fun by signing up for the Jesuit Media Lab’s daily Advent Reflections, which you can do by clicking on the image or link below:
I’ll be reflecting on my favorite Christmas anthem of all time.
And here is a piece I wrote for the Jesuit Media Lab (inspired by a conversation with Mike after writing my last piece!) on the editing process. I’ve never liked the phrase “kill your darlings,” so welcome to my search for better phrases.
P.S. I didn’t include the link to the online version of my piece about death. Here it is, on U.S. Catholic’s website.