Popping M&M's

Yep, it's that time of year again! Time to plant the M&M's (know around here as "cold pills") and the rest of the junk food and see what grows! For those who like nasty, salty, dry, unhealthy popcorn that gets stuck in your teeth and makes you suffer with unquenchable thirst, the people at Purdue University have discovered why those last few kernels at the bottom of the bag remain un-popped. It is due to leaky hulls. It sounds like something you would get from buying a really cheap ship, but it seems that a few rebel kernels of corn have tiny holes in their exterior that allow too much moisture to escape for enough pressure to build up inside. Popcorn growers and manufacturers are supposedly using the new findings to try to figure out how to breed the best corn varieties to keep the stragglers from remaining unpopped and hard as a rock. I suppose that is good news for all those popcorn eaters out there! According to popcorn.org, Americans today consume 17 billion quarts of popped popcorn each year, or about 54 quarts for the average American! Enjoy it!