Balsamic Vinegar & Popcorn

WARNING: If you are not into adventurous, daring, and random food concoctions, please do not read on. You will probably find this pretty disgusting... But, if not, please read on...

So, anyways, one of my favorite afternoon snack foods is popcorn. I've tried a lot of different microwave popcorn's. My favorite for the past two years or so is the mini natural bags of popcorn from Walgreens. For $3, you can purchase two boxes that each have six personal-sized bags. At 45 calories a bag and 40-cents each they are a pretty amazing afternoon snack!

But popcorn alone can get boring... so I've found some ways to "spice" it up. Here are some of the crazy concoctions I've come up with...

- Back in 7th grade, my friend Priscilla and I loved to make our own popcorn concoctions. I think our best ever was Milky Way bars melted over popcorn. When done right, this was delicious. However, you have to be really careful because often times the Milky Ways will start to burn and then this is NOT delicious...

- A few years ago, I decided to combine my love for hot sauce with my love for popcorn. I would pour hot sauce over my little bag of popcorn (anywhere from a little to a ton depending on my mood), mix it up, and enjoy. This combo is a little weird unless you really love hot sauce but my similarly-hot-sauce-obsessed-roommates really caught on too.

- When I was looking for something a little bit more sweet to finish my day, I'd pour a little cinnamon over my popped popcorn. Strangely, some cinnamon's are much better than others. Sweeter one's definitely taste better over the popcorn and the balance is important... too much cinnamon is really not nearly as good.

- Next, I decided to try a little chai powder mix over my popcorn. This is yummy too and even has a little tiny caffeine kick. I tend to stick to the cinnamon more often but this is great to mix it up sometimes too.

- Then, I decided it was time to try some more salty mixes. Basically, I think I just entered a salt craving era but I wanted to stick with my healthy-ish popcorn treat. We had some Kimlan soy sauce packets in our office kitchen and I found out through experimentation that 1 and 1/2 soy sauce packets over my Walgreens mini bag was perfect. You need to make sure to shake the popcorn bag up as you add the soy sauce over so the soy sauce spreads evenly. Otherwise, you end up with some very soggy popcorn. I'd also recommend eating this mix fairly quickly so that none of the kernals can get soggy.

- When we ran out of soy sauce packets, I tried fancy balsamic vinegar. This combo is also delicous. I usually have my popcorn around 5 pm and start craving my balsamic popcorn around 3 pm. If fancy ice cream shops can make balsamic ice cream, balsamic popcorn can't be that weird, can it?!

Does anyone else come up with crazy popcorn ideas or is this just me? I'm also curious to try banana slices over popcorn and maybe avocado slices too. Please let me know your thoughts on any of these popcorn concoctions if you've ever tried them. I'd love any other recommendations too!