Barbecue Popcorn- A revelation.

I have recently confessed my love of all shapes and sizes of cheap gummy candy. As long as I'm confessing my terrible food loves, I might as well tell you the next one... barbecue potato chips. I can't even buy these things, and I can barely even be in the same room with them. I loooooove them. Unfortunately, eating vats of potato chips does not fall in line with my attempts to eat healthy, whole foods.

However, today I made an amazing discovery. Behold... barbecue popcorn:

It turns out, a very simple spice mix, sprinkled on popcorn (with a bit of the healthy oil of your choice or butter to get it to stick), actually does a decent job of mimicking the bbq flavor, with way WAY less calories and fat than there are in a bag of chips. This is barely a recipe, but I thought it was pretty yummy and definitely worth sharing:

The stuff:
1 regular size bag microwave popcorn (OR an equivalent amount of normal plain popped popcorn).
1 tsp paprika (I used half regular, half smoked paprika)
.5 tsp brown sugar, packed
.5 tsp salt (reduce this by half if you're using microwave popcorn, because that stuff is already pretty salty)

What to do with it:
Pop the popcorn (duh). Mix together the spices thoroughly. Put a bit of oil (I used an oil mister) on the popcorn and stir/shake, then sprinkle on the entire batch of spice mix, tossing the popcorn as you go.


That is it! This will probably be my go-to snack in the face of a barbecue potato chip craving, and makes a fun twist on popcorn (which, by the way, is a very budget friendly snack if you buy it and pop it yourself) that you could easily serve to a group of people for a football game (or, more likely around here) an Oscars viewing event (my particular Oscars viewing event is all planned out, we are intending to focus 99% of our attention on awesome dresses and on George Clooney in a tux, because George in a tux is timeless. And maybe a little bit on Mark Ruffalo in a tux, just because he's adorable. The point is, we have our priorities in line). Anyways, whenever you eat it... enjoy!