More Popcorn and a Triathlon

So in all the haste and excitement of signing up for summer races this year, my friends and I decided we really wanted to get in on the HyVee Triathlon.  It's apparently a pretty big deal.  It's an Olympic qualifier event, they give away over a million dollars in prizes, and athletes from all over the world to swim in our lake, bike on our streets, run to our capital, and eat our free post-race cookies.

There were, of course, a couple mild problems with wanting to compete.  At the time of singing up, A. I hadn't swum further than the distance between the pool bar and the deep end in about 5 years... and B. I didn't own a bike. Solution: Find two saps friends to form a relay team who will do the swim and bike while I run.  They do the parts I don't like, and I get all the glory of crossing the finish line and getting a medal.  Love it.

So to say thank you to these fine women, without whom I would not have been able to participate in this event, I made popcorn.  Our swimmer had tried my birthday cake popcorn that I made awhile back (after it sat in the car for 36 hours, melted, and reformed into a gallon sized bag hunk of deliciousness) and despite all this, she loved it.  So I made a couple new varieties- half of which we shoved into our transition bag to munch on during the event, the rest stayed in the car for the ride home.

Side note- apparently bringing in candy coated popcorn to a serious athletic event makes the "serious" athletes stare at you disapprovingly.  Whatever- carbs make you go fast.  We were just carbo-loading.  And every real athlete knows that cake mix is the best and purest pre-race carb.  I think.  Probably.  I like popcorn.

Other side note- this was probably one of the best, and most fun days of my life.  We hauled our little race-tattooed selves out of bed sometime between the hours of I hate life and F-off I'm still sleeping (so, like, 4) and made our way to the lake.  Two of my friends did the swim and after much waiting, they took off and absolutely rocked the entire 1.5K.  To give you some perspective, I did a baby-tri last month that was a 300 meter swim.  That's about 3 city blocks.  This was 5 times that length.  Holy god, that would have been a lot of flailing and lake water ingested.

Next, my girlfriend went off on the bike ride.  After dropping a chain and conquering the 25 miles of "rolling hills" (which is a really pretty way of saying that this ride was going to kick peoples asses.) She rolled on up and passed me the race chip.  My turn!

So, here's the thing.  I can run- I know that.  I've done a marathon.  I enjoy running.  I have, in the past, run a lot and trained well for various events.  I apparently have developed a bit of a running 'tude where I think I'm too good to train for a 6 mile run because I've done so many distances much longer than that.  But it had been awhile since I ran those distances.  Like, months.  And apparently my arrogance kicked my ass.  After standing for 5 hours, not training, and being freaked out/tense for the 30 min before my run because I was eyeing down every biker looking for my teammate... the run sucked.  After what I thought was about 20 minutes of running, my body was killing me and I was 99% certain they must not be posting mile markers every single mile.  Then I passed the sign that said "One Mile" and I knew I was in for it.

But somehow I stumbled across that finish line 53 minutes later, collected my medals and found my team.  Then the post race binge fest commenced.  Crap food tastes so much sweeter when it's free and I'm in spandex.  So after 4 free cookies, 3 pieces of free cake and a free protein bar, we grabbed lunch (and beer!) and called it a day.

But then we discovered the car popcorn.  Despite being not hungry in the slightest, we concluded our fantastic triathlon event by diving into the bags face first and frantically gorging, leaving our faces and hands completely covered in melted white chocolate.  We are the definition of classy.  It helps that I was a little drunk by this point.

So there you have it.  Running.  Swimming.  Biking.  Popcorn.  Beer.  Good friends.  Free stuff.  A medal.  Epic.

And now for some notes on my popcorn....

These are the four kinds I made: Birthday Cake (which I already described here), Nutterbutter, Cookies n' Cake, and Reese's Peanut Butter Pretzel.

Cookies n' Cake
One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)
8 ounces white chocolate
3/8 cup yellow cake mix (dry mix, not batter)
10-15 crushed Oreos

Melt chocolate in microwave according to package directions and whisk in cake mix.  Pour over popcorn and Oreos and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.

Reese's Peanut Butter Pretzel

One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)

5 ounces white chocolate

5 ounces of peanut butter chips

1 cup chocolate coated peanut butter filled pretzels

Reese's Pieces (as many as you want)

Melt chocolate and peanut butter chips in microwave according to package directions.  Pour over popcorn, candies and pretzels and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.

Nutterbutter 
One bag of popped, buttered popcorn (placed in a large bowl, no kernels)
5 ounces white chocolate
5 ounces of peanut butter chips
1 cup mini Nutterbutters


Melt chocolate and peanut butter chips in microwave according to package directions.  Pour over popcorn and cookies and mix.  Spread on a piece of parchment paper.  When hardened, break into pieces and serve.

Cake Batter Popcorn and Chubby Hubby Popcorn

So once upon a time I decided to prematurely reinstate Cheat Day after being on probation, clearly disobeying my well intentioned nutritionist and letting my cravings for cinnamon rolls and beer prevail.  Shoot.  Oh well.  I was a pretty epic day, in more way than one:

Woke up at 4:00 in the freaking morning.  Husband was altogether too chipper.  Felt urge to knock him down a couple pegs/kick him in shins.  Drank coffee instead.

Much stretching and coffee drinking and aspirin taking occurred in next half hour.

Kathy (running buddy, friend, ride) shows up and hauls my butt downtown to park the car near the finish line of the impending race.

Bus (smelly, hot, full of more chipper people) takes us to the start line.  There is something about sitting on a bus for a half an hour that is extremely unsettling, when you know that your own way back is to run.

But we did it- we ran the 12.4 miles back to the finish line!  It was hot, and humid, and kind of really awesome.  My three awesome running buddies and I finished and actually had a pretty darn good time people watching, chatting, and accomplishing something pretty amazing.  We trained together, started together and finished together.

So after all this, and about an hour of locating my family in a crowd of thousands of sweaty, disoriented people throwing back the free beer, the whole "no cheat day thing" went out the window.  And it went something like this:
- Cinnamon Rolls and coffee after the run
- Almond Bars from freezer
- A rouge Cadbury Egg that somehow had managed to avoid being eaten until now
- Salami
- Chicken Salad wrap
- Philly Cheese Steak
- Sweet Potato Fries
- Nachos
- Apple Crisp with whipped cream that my mom forgot at my house and is now gone

Annnnnd popcorn.  But not just any popcorn.  Popcorn that was totally not my idea that I stole from another blog! Cake Batter Popcorn!  And, since I was popping up some pop corn anyway, I decided to dig through the pantry to see if inspiration would strike.  I ended up making up some "Chubby Hubby" popcorn which was great, but I found so many things that I could have put in the popcorn, but I had to hold myself back.

Also, I think I might have a hoarding problem.  It's not normal to have 3.5 packages of Ghiriadelli chocolate chips on hand the weekend after you made a recipe aimed at using up the chocolate chips in your pantry.  I also neglected to include the toffee I found, several packages of girl scout cookies, as well as both Christmas AND Easter candy (ok- I used a little of the Easter Candy.)

So here's my journey into the wild world of pouring melted white chocolate over candy and popcorn.  In no way could this recipe NOT turn out delicious.

Cake Batter Popcorn and Chubby Hubby Popcorn
Start by gathering up your mix ins.  For this recipe, that'll be sprinkles for the Cake Batter popcorn, and for the Chubby Hubby you'll need Reese's candy along with chocolate covered pretzels filled with peanut butter.  Chop up whatever needs to be chopped up:

Next, pop your popcorn and pour it into a bowl.

I first poured mine onto the counter top and transferred it into the bowl, avoiding any unpopped kernels.




Start melting your white chocolate over a double boiler.

As the chocolate is melting, throw half of your mix ins into the bowl with the popcorn.

If you are doing the cake batter kind, once the chocolate is melted, wisk in 1/4 cup cake batter and sprinkle another 1/8 cup over the popcorn itself.

Pour the white chocolate over the popcorn and mix until coated.  Pour the mixture onto some parchment paper to let it harden up.

Sprinkle the rest of the candy over the top and you are done!



You can drizzle some dark chocolate over the popcorn if you'd like.  I'd be ok with that.

Yum.

So this was way easy, and way fun.  You can be creative and throw in whatever kind of candy you like.  I took out about half the cake batter kind all on my very own, and a good portion of the chubby hubby.  This is pure salty sweet perfection.  It's recipe time!

Cake Batter Popcorn

Recipe adapted from: http://buddingbaketress.blogspot.com/2011/05/birthday-cake-popcorn.html

Ingredients:

One bag butter popcorn

3/8 cup yellow cake mix

8 ounces White Chocolate

4 tbsp sprinkles

Chocolate for drizzling (optional)

Directions

Pop popcorn and sift out unpopped or burned kernels.  Put into a large bowl and top with 2 tbsp of the sprinkles and 1/8 cup cake mix.  Melt white chocolate and pour over popcorn mixture.  Stir until coated and pour mixture onto parchment paper.  Top with remaining sprinkles and drizzle with chocolate if desired.  Let cool and break into pieces.

Chubby Hubby Popcorn

Ingredients

One bag butter popcorn

8 ounces White Chocolate

2.5 ounces of Reese's Candy's (about 4 peanut butter eggs)

3.5 ounces chocolate covered, peanut butter filled pretzels 

Chocolate for drizzling (optional)

Directions

Chop candy.  Pop popcorn and sift out unpopped or burned kernels.  Put into a large bowl and top with half of the mix ins.  Melt white chocolate and pour over popcorn mixture.  Stir until coated and pour mixture onto parchment paper.  Top with remaining candy and drizzle with chocolate if desired.  Let cool and break into pieces.