‘Scandal–ous‘ Day 1

I am SOOOO excited to be kicking off yet another themed series on Cooking Is My Sport. This one I’ve decided to dedicate to a special little television show that (hopefully) you all may have heard of, called Scandal.

Created by the brilliant Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy anyone?), Scandal centers around the life and career of the incomparable Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington), boss of a crisis management firm that primarily represent political figures in the public sphere, and handle their embarrassing crises and problems (and subsequently make them disappear).  Olivia is supported by a team of employees- the ‘Gladiators’- that help her smooth out and ‘fix’ the lives of her clients. However, Olivia’s own personal life is more often than not filled with more than its own share of drama and crises and the conflict of the show centers around how she handles (or doesn’t) all of that for herself.

I sincerely hope that I’ll be preaching to the choir for what I’m about to say here. It hardly needs further explication, but I’m gonna say it anyway. Just in case.

Scandal is the show, guys. And I do mean THE show.

This series on the blog I’ve decided to do is a result of my extreme impatience/excitement/celebration/anticipation of February 27th…the day we’ve all been waiting for: the premiere of the 2nd half of season 3 of Scandal. The food that you guys’ll be seeing over the next few days was in some way, inspired by the show and its characters- some of those ways will seem obvious, while others may not seem so obvious. But don’t worry- as is the case with Scandal, nothing is ever ‘random’ or by ‘coincidence’, and I’ll be giving my explanation for the inspiration behind all the food- and hopefully we can get some lovely Scandal-ous discussion going here as well. (Because the only thing more fun than watching Scandal is talking about Scandal. Right? Of course right.)

I don’t know about you guys, but in my house every time Scandal comes on, a bowl of popcorn is made. Apparently I’m not the only one who considers this a must. The combination of Scandal, popcorn and red wine is one that many a Gladiator swears by: the shows delivers the thrills and suspense, the popcorn delivers the cure for the munchies, and the wine has the job of mellowing out the viewer from the hour of intense drama that they’re about to see. This is all well and good for most people, but I happen to be one of those freaks of nature that just doesn’t enjoy alcohol that much- even wine. I don’t know why really, but all of it just ends up giving me a stomach ache. And stomach aches during Scandal is a no-go. So yeah, I just don’t ‘indulge’ when it comes to booze. My great secret revealed: I’m a light weight.

However, I have absolutely no problem with putting away some popcorn. Especially this popcorn. My inspiration for including this recipe in the series should be pretty obvious. Cookies and Cream is a combination of something white/vanilla with added black/chocolate cookies to it. I’m sure that this sounds pretty familiar to Gladiators, right?

Let’s just imagine that the cream and white popcorn in this recipe represents President Fitzgerald Grant III before his election to office. He wasn’t too bad by himself, but Fitz still needed something more to get him to that next level. We all know what that ‘something’ was for Fitz. Olivia Pope. Once he had Olivia, Fitz just went to a whole new level (literally). In the same way, once this popcorn gets the Oreos added to it, it’s just out of bounds. You’ll be lucky if you can actually put it down or want to share with anyone.

And now that I’ve beat this metaphor to a pulp, let’s just let this recipe be called the ‘Olivia and Fitz Popcorn’ and leave it at that.

Any ‘Olitz’ fans? Where do you think their relationship will be going in the second half of the season?

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Cookies and Cream {Olivia & Fitz} Popcorn

Recipe Courtesy of Food Network Magazine

CLICK HERE FOR PRINTABLE VERSION

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup white popcorn kernels, plus 4 seperate kernels.
• 1/4 peanut or vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 4 cups lightly crushed chocolate sandwich cookies (such as Oreos)

Directions

1. Pour vegetable oil into a large wok or pot over medium heat.*

2. Heat the 4 separate kernels in the oil until one pops. Add the other 3/4 cup  of kernels and cover the pot. Cook, shaking the pot occasionally until the popping stops. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. Warm sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Drizzle over the hot popcorn.

4. Toss popcorn with the crushed sandwich cookies. Spread onto a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Allow to sit until fully dry, about 30-40 minutes.

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