Farmer Boy & "National Popcorn Day"

As I thought about this special day, I couldn't help but think about what Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her husband, Almanzo, as a boy, (Farmer Boy) and his obsession with eating popcorn.  She wrote about how he pondered the thought of popcorn in milk, saying, "You can fill a glass full to the brim with milk, and fill another glass of the same size brim full of popcorn, and then you can put all the popcorn kernel into the milk, and milk will not run over. You cannot do this with bread. Popcorn and milk are the only two things that will go into the same place."

I always wondered if this was true or just his mind rambling. So I took up the challenge! (But I didn't use full glasses - this makes it easier to see the results.)  The results are shown here, in this picture:

Farmer Boy got it right!  I think it is because the popcorn is so full of air, that it just doesn't have enough weight and once it is saturated with the milk, it takes up the same space. (But I'm not a popcorn genius, like he was, I just like popcorn!)

As it turns out, popcorn and milk was a common breakfast cereal of his day. (At least in was in the farming communities, where corn was grown.)  So I suppose he had already discovered this trick, by eating it!  Lord knows, if it wasn't nailed down, he was eating it!  I guess all his eating was balanced out by the work he did on the farm - or all the mischief he got into!

If  you've never had popcorn and milk for breakfast, you should try it - I like it, but these days you can get so many different sorts of breakfast cereal, it is easier to just open a box!

If you attempt this same experiment, please leave a comment here. Thanks. The Old Man in the Bib Overalls