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Olive Oil Popcorn with Za’atar

Maureen Abood

Jan 24, 2015, Updated Jan 04, 2023

I don’t remember seeing movies in the theater all that frequently growing up. It was a very occasional treat, and I’m sure this was not out of discipline or deprivation, but because it just wasn’t the industry it is today.

My great movie-watching memories are rooted most comfortably at home, with my brother and sister and me (the youngest of the five kids) lined up across my parents’ bed in the dark, watching. Here we feasted on Willie Wonka, Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz—movies we went completely crazy over because they were shown only once a year, and we’d waited sooooooooo long to see them again.

Either my mom was a wizard herself or serendipity was on her side, because those exciting movie-watching nights seemed to fall  on the same nights my parents were hosting one of their regular dinner parties. These were all-out beautiful evenings that Mom orchestrated from her kitchen with classic meals like roasted tenderloin and twice-baked potatoes. On those occasions my dad would come home from the office with striped boxes of peanuts from The Peanut Shop in downtown Lansing, and the lovely little silver nut dishes they received for their wedding were put into action.

Upstairs, nut dishes of another sort were on offer. We had our brown paper lunch bags folded down at the top, one for each kid. My mother knew how to snack her kids some fun for movie-watching, filling the bags with salty popcorn, pretzels, mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips (how exciting when a chocolate chip got mixed in with a little handful of popcorn or pretzels). Who needs beef tenderloin when you’ve got your own bag of gold to hoard?

Perhaps this popcorn bag of my childhood had something to do with my addiction-level love for Garrett’s popcorn in Chicago (a ravenous mow-down of a bag of that popcorn is always regrettable, but so good in the moment), which I ate of course not at the movies, but walking up and down Michigan Avenue on my lunch hours, wondering how I’d get the yellow stain off my fingers for the afternoon.

I’ve gotten into making the caramel corn at home (try this recipe; you won’t regret it), and elevating movie-nights on the bed with truffle-salted popcorn. But this winter’s at-home movie-watching season (God bless you On Demand, Netflix, Amazon…the whole crew), I’ve started popping my corn in olive oil.

Be still my heart: olive oil popcorn is unbelievably good!

And because I can’t leave well enough alone, the olive oil led me to think of Lebanese za’atar, since those two are both made perfect together, and wouldn’t that make a fine brown-bag popcorn treat?

I was so right about this that I even hesitated sharing it here, thinking of patents and trademarks and secret recipes so spot on they could make a girl millions.

Or at least just a delicious night at home with the movies.

(P.S. I invite you to dive into my updated site design with a big bowl of za’atar popcorn in hand! It may not be as exciting as the movies, but it’ll do for mindless popcorn eating…)