The Popcorn Trout Incident

Just look at that gorgeous Rainbow Trout skin! Is there anything prettier in this world?


Me with one of the beloved rainbow trout.

At our house, CL does most of the cooking. But every once in a while, I get back into the kitchen just to prove I can still make a favorite meal.

One weekend, we'd gotten groceries, and I wanted to make trout ... We'd also purchased popcorn, and CL transferred it from the plastic bag to a glass jar for preservation, but it didn't all fit. So I left the remainder in the bag on the stove as a reminder to pop this batch of corn later that evening ...

Later that day, I got the trout ready and put it in the oven to bake. After a while, I heard a popping noise and checked the fish. I saw popped white popcorn kernals in the bottom of the oven with more popping by the second ... Puzzled, I asked CL, "Why is there popcorn in the bottom of the oven?" By then it had started to smoke ... I turned off the oven and went for a walk to sort all this out.

The bag with the remaining popcorn melted from the hot air coming up through the vent on top of the old stove. The loose popcorn fell down the vent into the hot oven and popped.

I cleaned out the popcorn and finished baking the fish a little while later. We had a nice trout dinner--sans popcorn.