Thrifty Thursday: Home-Popped Popcorn

Jul 7, 2016
2 min read

Our family LOVES popcorn. Not all the random flavored stuff, but straight up, totally buttery and salty popcorn. We had to set a specific day to eat it because our 4yo asked for it for every meal and snack. He does well with order, so picking a day made sense to him, and our 2yo just goes with it (thankfully!). Sometimes popcorn is what they choose as their prize, instead of grabbing something from the toy box or watching a show on the iPad. Yeah...we like it THAT much.

So with the amount of popcorn we consume, it wasn't really cost effective to buy a lot of boxes of the microwave stuff, because we'd seriously go through a whole box in one night. That adds up fast! Our solution? A Popcorn Machine! The hubs and I were gifted one when we married, and we used a couple of times before kids...but we use it AT LEAST once a week (if not more!) now that we have popcorn-loving kiddos. It has probably been our most utilized gift (hint, hint to all those looking for wedding gifts!), and while shopping at our local Dollar Tree, we found the perfect popcorn tubs for our Friday Movie Nights (our designated popcorn night).

You'll notice in the pic we have a jar of popcorn seeds. These initially are a little more pricey (around $5), but we reuse it! The bags of popcorn (not the boxed kind, but the bags for popcorn machines) are only about $2 and fills the jar up, sometimes with a little extra depending on the bag. We typically do 2 batches every Friday and a whole jar lasts about a month, depending on how many times popcorn is earned as a prize. The electricity it takes to make the popcorn is very minimal, and we TRY not to overdo it on the butter, so that cost is relatively low as well. Not only is it more cost effective to use an air popper, but the kids LOVE to hear it, see it, smell it, and...well...EAT it! And you can rest easy knowing you're giving your kiddos a healthy-ish treat.

Happy Popping!