copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012
We discovered a great way to make popcorn – almost by accident. And isn’t that the way all great things happen? Does that mean all of us – human beings – are accidental creations?
Organic ginger is what started us on the road to this fantastic snack. Healthy, quick to make and great tasting.
Start with a pound or two of organic ginger.
Wash the ginger in cold running water with a vegetable brush
because you don’t want to take the skin off the ginger. Many of the nutrients you want for your body are in the skin.
Somewhere in this blog – try clicking on “Health” or “Bettina Cookbook” – is a recipe for Ginger Tea. Follow that recipe or what follows from my memory.
Put the organic ginger in a large pot and fill the pot with water
Add a bit of Organic Turbinado Sugar to your taste
Put a cover on the pot and let it boil, then simmer for a couple hours.
At the end of this process pour the hot water – now Ginger Tea – into the glass containers you use to store tea in the refrigerator.
If you don’t have such glass pitchers, containers, whatever – now is a good time to get some so you can constantly keep one kind or another of your homemade tea in your refrigerator to use whenever you want a little break with a great drink. That is as close to ‘fast food’ as we come – pre-make it for the future to be able to just open the refrigerator and eat or drink.
Now you have Southern Sweet Tea and you can serve it to friends, relatives, – those you want to have good health going forward. This tea is fantastic. It stimulates the body; cools you down in summer; helps your digestion – at least that is what it does for me.
If you don’t like “Sweet Tea”, then just boil the organic ginger root by itself without adding the Organic Turbinado Sugar.
Once you have poured out and saved the water in which you boiled the organic ginger root you are ready to begin the process of making the popcorn.
Take the ginger root left in the pot.
Add one cup organic turbinado sugar, two cups water, one cup maple syrup and let that simmer covered on the stove until you get a heavy syrup (somewhere over 240 degrees on a candy thermometer)
Once you get syrup of the right consistency – pour the mixture onto a cooling plate or into a medium-sized Corning pot
If you want to make the ginger root into candied ginger, take the ginger root out of the syrup – roll it in organic turbinado sugar and put it aside.
Now comes the fun:
With your AIR POPCORN POPPER -
no, not the same one you use to roast coffee in the mornings, unless you want to add a coffee taste to your popcorn (which might not be so bad)
Pour the amount of unpopped corn you want to use into the measuring cup, which comes with the Air Popcorn Popper
plug in the Popcorn Popper
and let the smells permeate the house and your nostrils so you are ready for goodies to come.
Don’t forget to put a large bowl next to the Popcorn Popper to catch the corn as it comes out beautifully popped, hot with gorgeous smells!
While the corn is popping, melt 1/2 cup organic butter
(what do you expect, I am from New Orleans with French ancestors. Two facts which put butter into my DNA)
Mix the ginger syrup with the butter and let it simmer until the two are nicely mixed.
Carefully and very slowly drizzle this mixture over the popped corn
stopping intermittently to mix the popped corn and the syrup together.
Be very gentle with the freshly popped corn. You need to watch to make sure you don’t pour the hot syrup too fast or mix the two together too vigorously because you could turn your popped corn into a sludgy mess.
Don’t use too much syrup – just a light drizzle because
- less is more in this case. If you like thickly coated popped corn because you were raised on that heavily coated caramel corn then have a ball and use as much syrup as you want to create that affect. I was raised on that heavily coated caramel corn and stopped eating it when I became an adult.
This popped corn brings back those memories – gives a fantastic adult taste – and is especially good when you use the syrup lightly and sparingly.
If you want to go a step further and cut the now candied, ginger into really tiny pieces you can mix those tiny pieces into your Ginger/Maple Syrup/Popcorn for an additional unidentifiable, except to the most sophisticated palates, taste. Makes a nice substitute for those candied peanuts that sometimes still appears on the grocery store shelves. Nice, the ginger is quite lovely and brings this snack to new heights!
enjoy!
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Two Thousand &5, Seven Years Later
Monday, April 9th, 2012copyright Bettina Network, inc. for Jonathan Betts Fields 2012
Kid musicians battle the id
further justice through thick and then
permeate airwaves with soul and posture
colorful words, diaphragm of opera
from Shakespeare to Jay Z, defying nostalgia
sleep new dreams and pray for contagion
well blended harmony’s the weapon we’re waving.
Speaking voices are perfectly proper
they laugh as would English speaking sea otters
returning to homes that float or submerge
to wash away souls, you’ll need more than dirge
we don’t sink or swim, we’re one with the water
if we were to leave we’d abandon our power
we hold hands through inverted rain showers.
Zatarain’s ain’t got nothin’ on me –
neck cocked back like an expected sneeze
horns high in the sky, catchin’ the breeze
high hat attacks the air – killer bees
strings intertwined – tangled webs they weave
toe tappin’s impossible without bendin’ knees
sea perseverance, revitalize New Orleans.
I could hear applause in the distance. The woman from the registration table saw me wandering a bit and ushered me in the correct direction. I visited Shady Hill School to support the new friends I met over a three-course breakfast at a Bettina Network home. I could hardly wait to partake in the celebration straight from New Orleans.
I thought I missed them. Then, in walked a league of extraordinary men and women. A palpable increase in energy met the trumpet, trombone, tuba, two drums and the voice. The esteemed Executive Director and the mother of the younger drummer completed the entourage. The performers reemerged as teachers, and continued to represent the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music and Musicians’ Village professionally, passionately and extremely well.
Their workshop, entitled “Vision, Perseverance and Revitalization” was one of many during Shady Hill School’s Diversity Conference. For middle school students to entertain large notions like “Social Justice” and “Equity Through the Arts” could have been a daunting task; the school’s staff made it age relevant and all wore smiles while they worked. The kids were comfortable and eager take their music lesson serious, possibly borrowing a page from the acutely gifted drummer boy.
Calvin, the band leader and head teacher instructed the students to listen to the global sound and to identify the role of each instrument in the piece they were to play. The band played Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues.” The Shady Hill students listened. Then they were divided into sections, and the auditorium became a conglomeration of progress. For brief moments, some instruments synched: first were the strings & percussion sections. Then the brass and woodwinds danced. All the while, you could hear the Ellis Marsalis Center musicians chiseling away unnecessary sounds.
The Jazz Workshop Ensemble began playing with the speed of ducklings following their mother across a busy street. Once across, the piano and drums were occupied by a new set of feet and hands, and the trip began again. The trips back and forth steadied the ensemble’s sway and allowed for inspired improvisation. Before the last group began their end-of-workshop recital, Calvin shared some knowledge that reached beyond playing in a jazz band: “If you can’t hear the person next to you, you’re playing too loud.”
Much love,
Jonathan Betts Fields
www.GlobalJon.com
MeLlamoGlobalJon@gmail.com
facebook.com/GlobalJon ~ twitter.com/GlobalJon
TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email info@bettina-network.com
TO LEARN MORE try www.bettina-network.com
To Be Added to the Bettina Network Email List, Sign-Up on the bettina-network.com web site
USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK YOUR BED & BREAKFAST!
1-800-347-9166 inside U.S. or 617-497-9166 from wherever!
Tags: bed & breakfast, Bettina Community Poetry, Ellis Marsalis Center for Music and Musicians' Village, jazz workshop, New Orleans, Shady Hill School, Vision Perseverance and Revitalization
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