I’ll never forget the days after my father passed away, shortly after I turned 5 and just before my brother turned 7. Despite the heartache of having lost a parent, those days came to encompass some of my most fond memories of bonding, of family, of food, and of simplicity. I spent many afternoons with my grandmother. Long before my days of veganism (and seemingly before the word ever hit a shelf in Charlotte), Nana and I would cuddle up with a plate of blue cheese and melba toast, and proceed to watch Murder She Wrote.

Nana would fall asleep. I’d eat all the cheese.

Meanwhile, my mother worked her butt off. Yet she never let her family ideals slip through the cracks, making certain we always sat at the table to eat together, no matter how hard of a day at work she had or how much homework awaited us. Despite the turmoil in our lives and most prominently our hearts, mom had a beautiful way of making it all seem so simple.

This simplicity is something I’m striving more and more to achieve every day. While I’ve always had a knack for appreciating simplicity, I’ve never been great at creating it. I like to over-think, over-complicate, and thereby de-simplify my life every chance I get. So one might be able to imagine why I so appreciate the little things my mom did when I was growing up that kept our life simple.

A great example is how we often ended our evenings. We would eat dinner early, part ways to do homework, and often reconvene in the living room for some good old syndicated television and, my favorite part, a bowl of mom’s popcorn. I don’t know how she reached the point of insisting on making it from scratch, but I do know that she made it look so easy. It was always perfect.

So to this day, I’m a homemade popcorn gal. Of course, I keep it “simple,” but in my favorite way - with a twist. In my recent years, I’ve never been able to settle on just buttered [read: Earth Balanced] and salted popcorn. No, I tend toward honey-cayenne (I’m still using up my honey from my pre-vegan days) and a lot of experimenting. Think: coconut oil and black pepper, olive oil and oregano. And most recently, Sweet Basil.

I went to the Holiday Gala for The Humane League Charlotte Chapter last weekend, and donated three huge bowls of this stuff. I thought it was kind of a weird concoction at first, but the feedback I received was unrelentingly positive. So of course I had to share it here with you.

I hope you thoroughly enjoy this!

To your Winter evenings spent on the couch,

Hannah

Sweet Basil Popcorn

4 cups organic plain popcorn
(I cook mine on the stove using coconut oil!
Cook according to packaged kernel directions.)
1 tablespoon vegan Earth Balance
1 tablespoon organic brown rice syrup
¼ cup basil, finely chopped
dash of salt

1. Melt Earth Balance over medium heat on stove.
2. Add brown rice syrup and basil to hot pan. Swirl to combine.
3. Remove pan from heat as soon as syrup begins to bubble.
4. Pour mixture over popcorn and stir/toss together immediately.
5. Sprinkle with salt.
Enjoy!