How to Make Microwave Popcorn in a Bowl

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How to Make Microwave Popcorn in a Bowl

Mellow February 28, 2013 41 Comments

This is the easiest thing ever: Make popcorn right in the bowl you're going to serve it in. You don't need to do it in a paper bag, you don't need any chemical-laden, pre-measured packets from the store, and you don't need a space-hogging kitchen appliance just for popping corn.



I use blue popcorn. This will work with any variety of popcorn!

Measure out 1/3 c of popcorn kernels into a large microwave-safe bowl. I just use a glass mixing bowl, probably with a 1 gallon capacity. You may want to vary the amount of corn you use depending on the size of your bowl or the size of your microwave.



If you just want to make a single serving, use 2 Tb corn in a large soup bowl. This has been great for when my kids want to snack on some popcorn. I can make exactly as much as we want with really no hassle.

We've always popped our popcorn on its own, and then added seasonings after popping, but based on reader suggestions (thanks, guys!) after publishing this article, I've started adding oil & salt before popping. I use about 2 Tb oil and several grinds of sea salt, stir it into the kernels, and then pop as normal. I think it gives the popcorn a great texture to pre-season it, but it works both ways.

Whatever size bowl you use, just make sure you have a microwave safe plate that fits over the top. The plate will keep the popcorn in while letting steam out.



Microwave, covered with the plate, for about 3 to 4 1/2 minutes. Stay within earshot of the microwave during the last couple minutes, and pull it out as soon as the pops reduce in frequency to about 1 every 3 seconds. If you've ever made microwave popcorn before, it's the same thing here. If you let it go too long, it will burn, but you'll have a lot of unpopped kernels if you pull it out too soon.



Our favorite way to dress popcorn is with melted butter or olive oil, nutritional yeast, and soy sauce or Bragg liquid aminos. Add whatever you like to your popcorn and enjoy!

We buy our bulk organic popcorn from Azure Standard, a natural foods distributor. Below are Amazon Affiliate Ads. Any purchase made through them helps support our family. Thanks in advance!

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Hens And The Garden: A Tragedy

DIY Urban Farming

Hens And The Garden: A Tragedy

Mellow February 16, 2013 43 Comments

Why We Decided To Let Them Go, Part Two...

Beyond The Economics of Keeping Chickens (part one in this series) is the reality of chickens in the garden. Before starting this venture, I believed gardening and chicken farming went together perfectly: The chickens would eat the slugs and other pests, while providing natural fertilizer for the garden. It turned out our chickens would never eat a slug though, ever. It's the rare chicken that will- they don't seem to like the sticky texture.

Chickens, not eating slugs.

This was a hard blow to my synergistic fantasy, but I maintained that the chickens were still providing valuable, nitrogen-rich fertilizer for the garden. Here's what would happen, though: Every time we let the chickens out, they would travel all over the yard, destroying every bit of garden and every tasty plant they could. They leveled my raised beds; they killed an entire bed of asparagus by repeatedly digging it out; they ate the beneficial worms and left the slugs to destroy any remaining tender plants; and literally every day they would kick all the mulch off the beds and onto the paths that I tried to keep clear.

Hand feeding some fresh greens.

Some people, with better vision and perhaps better sense than myself, plot their garden beds all together so they can effectively be fenced off from maurading chickens and other garden pests. I, on the other hand, have planted food crops in every section of my yard, making fencing off the garden an impossibility.

Because of this garden destruction problem, for a couple of years we reluctantly kept our hens confined to their ample chicken run. They were still technically "free range" although their quality of life could not have been as high as whey they really got out into the yard every day. 

Our chicken shanty

Life in the chicken run was like this: In the rainy season (in Seattle, this means from October well into May) the chickens were living in mud. Every year we improved the roof on their chicken run, until now it looks like something you'd see in a shanty town, and still somehow the mud collects. 

This is not healthy for chickens- they need frequent dust baths in dry soil to clean themselves and keep the mites away, and they are more likely to contract other illness or parasites if they're constantly in wet conditions. We did our best to keep them dry, including adding wheelbarrows full of fresh woodchips to the run anytime it needed it, but it's been a constant battle that the mud always seems to be winning.

We used to spend time in the run with the hens, before it was a mud pit...

In the dry season (July - September) the run would be the opposite extreme: dry and dusty, and we'd be adding woodchips to try to keep the dust down. Literally everything in the vicinity of the chicken run would get coated in a thick layer of light brown dust... until the rains returned. When I felt bad for the hens, I would let them roam free in the yard, where they would again destroy everything they could. 

I do love having chickens, for so many reasons, but this article is about why we've decided not to keep them anymore. Surely we'll be in a place sometime in the future where we can keep chickens again - some place where the yard is big enough to keep a rooster or two for fertilized eggs for a fresh supply of homegrown chicks, and a couple of runs that can be rotated out, allowing the plants and invertebrate life to return to the soil. Or maybe at the next place we live I'll be wise and plan a garden that can be fully fenced off, so the chickens can roam free with minimal damage...

For now, we'll stick with raising rabbits, and focus on growing vegetables in a way that we really haven't been able to do for the last several years, now that our attempts won't be foiled by a pack of ravaging, but well-intentioned, hens.  

Below are Amazon Affiliate Ads. Any purchase made through them helps support our family. Thanks in advance!

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The Economics Of Keeping Chickens

DIY Parenting Unschooling Urban Farming

The Economics Of Keeping Chickens

Mellow February 15, 2013 51 Comments

Why We Decided To Let Them Go...

It seemed like a step backwards at first- we've come this far toward sustainability; we haven't bought eggs (or chicken meat!) in years; we've got a coop with a window and a skylight, and a light on a timer; we've got a safe and relatively dry chicken run; we recently added a waterer that hardly needs any maintenance; we enjoy and value the fresh eggs; and keeping chickens is really very easy once the coop and run was all set up. So, why was Nik suggesting that we ditch the chickens? It was hard for me to grasp at first, but I've come around, and here's why:

A flock of pullets, relaxing in their new chicken run before beginning a life of egg laying.

We don't really make a habit of spending money on hobbies that don't pay for themselves one way or another. Ideally, chickens will produce more value in eggs (and/or meat) than they cost in feed and other inputs. It helps if you are getting enough to sell a few dozen each month, which we did here and there during our hens' younger years. These days, though, our hens are all three and four years old, and we only get an egg or two every day from our six hens. Yes, these eggs are of a great high quality and freshness that you can't buy in stores, but they are few and far between. Most people don't keep hens around this long, because there is no way their output matches the cost in feed at this "advanced" age.

But feeding them isn't the only cost: Whether you do it after two years or after four years, you have to replace your hens if you want to keep collecting eggs. There are different ways to do this, and they pretty much all require a large upfront expense- people rarely give away hens in the prime of life (1 to 2 years old). If you order day-old chicks you pay $3 to $8 per chick, plus additional if you want them vaccinated, plus another lump sum for shipping costs. Or you can buy from a local farmer, and probably pay a higher per chick fee but save the shipping costs. The selection will be more limited from a local farmer, but your money will stay in the community and support a family farm.

Day old chicks need starter feed, sand, water, a heat lamp, and a home big enough to keep them cozy for the 5 weeks it takes to grow their feathers.

We spent over $60 ordering our first batch of 8 chicks several years ago. Of course that does not include the initial costs of building the coop and run, and the chick starter feed which is more expensive than layer feed. We are very DIY and try not to buy a lot of gadgets that we can make ourselves, so we built the coop from salvaged wood and made our own feeders and waterers, but eventually found it very worth another $35 for a real metal waterer, because of all the time saved washing out and refilling spilled and stepped in containers.

We got the day-old chicks in April, and finally one hen started to lay in late November, for just a short time before winter set in. We didn't get any regular egg production until the next February, after nearly 10 months of coddling our dear flock. Those were exciting days, and we really loved collecting the multi-colored eggs once they started coming!  

After the first year, though, keeping chickens became more about production and less about their general cuteness- the novelty had worn off, and they became more practical farm animals, and less novelty pets. We had a couple of years of moderately good egg laying - minus the winters, when we get hardly enough natural light in the Pacific Northwest to bother getting out of bed, much less laying an egg. We finally added a coop light to encourage egg production, so that we wouldn't be spending winters feeding non-productive hens.

We were so sure, early on, that our chickens would pay for themselves in the end, with all the eggs we wouldn't have to buy, and with all the extras that we could sell. While we always had plenty of willing buyers, it was rare that we had enough extra to sell more than a dozen or two in a month, even during the summer when we had a total of 13 chickens. Yes, three of those were immature roosters that friends had given us for the stew pot, but the rest were laying hens.

Babies, during their novelty days

We should have had a bustling egg business, but really all the hens were past their prime egg laying years. Really, there is only a small window between pullet (a young chicken before she starts to lay) and old maid (when most people cull their hens to make room for younger layers).  

For us, sustainable means not having to buy replacements all the time. By this definition, city chickens are definitely not sustainable. If we could keep a rooster, and let the hens raise their own fertilized eggs into a new batch of chicks every year, then we could keep up the egg production without buying more birds all the time. But, having to buy a new batch of chicks every two years, and then coddle them for ten months before they really get into production makes no sense. Some breeds lay as early as five or six months old, but of course we bought the heirloom breeds that mature more slowly and are more sensitive to the loss of light during the winter months.

Our two year old, with our day-old chick.

I will say that raising chicks, and keeping hens, was a really special experience.  It was fun for our kids to be able to handle the tiny wee chicks, and they've loved helping to take care of the hens and collect eggs over the years. It was a great experiment, and we found it just didn't work out for us in the end.

For more on this story, read part two in this series- Hens and the Garden; A Tragedy.

Below are Amazon Affiliate Ads. Any purchase made through them helps support our family. Thanks in advance!

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