I had a hankering,

And I was feeling lazy. It's the end of a long week of reconnection.

So instead of doing something more complicated, I made myself a big bowl of popcorn for dinner.

In a house sans-microwave, that requires actually putting kernels in the bottom of a large kettle and adding olive oil, turning on the gas, donning protective goggles and oven mitts, and carefully wielding wooden spoon and kettle lid.

Less than ten minutes later, eccola!: perhaps the most perfect batch of olive-oil laden crunchy corn goodness I have ever tasted. A dash of french sea salt (could I BE more of a snob?!) and I'm in warm, crunchy, greasy-fingered heaven.

I laugh as I remember talking to my neighbor about this subject about six months ago. I'm not sure how it came up, but suddenly I wanted to know the word for 'popcorn'. I went through the full explanation in Italian, using the words I KNOW to "talk around" the word I wanted to learn:

"what's the word for ... it's a type of food, you make it from many small pieces of dry, raw corn, when you put them in oil and heat them up, they sort of explode. In America, we eat it when we watch movies... "

She followed my every word (she's a very good teacher). Thought carefully, then said, "oh! You must mean Pop-corn".

Oh, geez. I just spent all that energy to learn a word that's the same in Italian and English?!?! It's always the easy ones that sneak up and surprise you.