Expectations

Today, I woke up to some weird smells. Went to the kitchen to investigate, and I found Crystal trying to make popcorn. What she was actually doing was toasting some adzuki beans in a saute pan, after having tried to pop them in the microwave. Saying something to the effect of, "WTF is wrong with this popcorn? NONE of them are popping."

There's a certain amount of incompetence involved in failing to distinguish between a bean and a popcorn kernel that can't really be explained away, but I couldn't help but marvel at the circumstances that led to this.

For context, the adzuki bean is a small red bean that's used in a lot of Asian confections, as a sweetened bean paste. It looks like this:

Dull red. Looks nothing like popcorn, right?

Except I'm a big popcorn fan, and I like to try a lot of different varieties, like Crimson Jewell (pops up small, thin hulls, good corn flavor). I put in a bulk order and have been making this popcorn exclusively for a while.

I also like to save the airtight jars that popcorn comes in and use them for stuff.

Stuff like storing beans ...

Incidentally, I'm not a big Snappy popcorn fan. The hulls were super tough, and the flavor didn't make up for it.