Prognostication & Popcorn Recipes

Today is the day that the country looks to Pennsylvania's most famous groundhog for weather predictions.

Groundhog Day is one of those odd holidays that's always, unexplainably on the calendar, and if you don't know, it stems from the Christian holiday called Candlemas, which is situated right in the middle of Winter and is a celebration of Light and Christ.  

I have to applaud the group of people who not only started this tradition of looking to a groundhog to predict future weather conditions, but who managed to make it a national holiday.  As a PR person, I see what an incredible job they've done to keep the lore alive and make it a fun event that people flock to at 3:00 am every February 2nd.

But seriously, as a Mom, I do the same thing...look for ways to make the ordinary celebratory...especially in the dead of winter...and most especially during a pandemic.

Today, we were guaranteed 6 more weeks of winter weather, and we're kicking that off with snow storms this week and single digit temps next week.

So, to warm our lives up a bit today, we whipped up some yummy popcorn and delivered it to friends.  Here are my kids looking various degrees of happy to be out of the house to deliver said popcorn:

Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, PA is just 1 hour and 45 minutes from our house, and while I've never been there in person, this video (which was a virtual replacement for the yearly in-person celebration because of COVID) is a fun one to watch to get the full experience without actually being there!

Here are two recipes for the popcorn treats that we made today:

Valentine's Popcorn:

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp butter

12-14 oz mini marshmallows

10 cups of popped popcorn

valentine's Day sprinkles

10 oz Valentine's Day M & Ms

Small pretzels broken up into pieces

Instructions:

You make this similarly to rice crispy squares.  Pop the corn and add broken up pretzels. Melt the butter in a pan on the stove, then add marshmallows and stir to melt and combine with melted butter. Pour over popcorn.  Mix.  Add M & Ms and sprinkles and more of each ingredient to your liking.

Lucky Charms Popcorn:

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp butter

12-14 oz mini marshmallows

10 cups of popped popcorn

10 oz Lucky Charms cereal

Small pretzels broken up into pieces

Instructions:

You make this similarly to rice crispy squares.  Pop the corn and add broken up pretzels. Melt the butter in a pan on the stove, then add marshmallows and stir to melt and combine with melted butter. Pour over popcorn.  Mix.  Add more of each dry ingredient to your liking.

Now it's time for me to go watch "Groundhog's Day!"...THE MOVIE!