Home-made "Kettle" Corn (minus the kettle:)--AND My Husband Saved the Day!

I discovered the beauty of kettle corn, sometime over the last few months.  I didn't know what it was!  Carmel corn is just too sweet, but this (when done right) is just the perfect blend of subtle sweet and salt!  I've tried store-bought--doesn't cut it.  I had some from a gourmet popcorn shop in Gatlinburg--it was ok, nothing special.  Then we took a trip to Townsend, TN where I happened to talk to a shop owner, who told me that the very next day Townsend was having their annual Townsend Fall Fest--a pretty big event in the Smokies.  She also proceeded to share that she had to work and was very disappointed that she would miss the kettle corn vendor, because it was the best ever (and they don't have a shop, they just show up once a year at this fest (and others, I'm sure:).  So, all night long, I couldn't get it out of my head that I couldn't miss this best-ever kettle corn; so I could finally figure out what the big deal was.  

We arrived to the festival on Friday, and I walked around the crafters, then the foodies, and I found her!  But I found her sitting all by herself, with not a popped kernel in sight, looking rather dejected:(  She went on to explain that their popper broke, and that her husband was on the road making the very long drive back to their house to get their other popper.  She said they believe the motor over-heated and burnt out.  J came to my side at that moment (a manufacturing engineer:), because what she said (she said a little bit more than what I wrote) didn't sound right--and he offered to take a look at it.  She of course didn't say no---so we all went to the back of her tent, he took a peak for literally like 30 seconds, and within a minute he had the problem fixed (he was confident it was fixed, even though she wouldn't turn it on til her husband returned as she didn't know how to operate the machine).  She thanked J profusely, and quickly called her husband to turn him around (still, w/o a test of the popper, she had faith in J's word--I asked are you sure it will work, he assured me it would:D)--I returned about 2 hours later, when she was so excited to see me (as she continued to serve many many customers)--I was just about to purchase my bag, when she came over and handed me four large bags of kettle corn--and asked me to send J over, as her husband wanted to give him a big man hug:D  (apparently their second popper is a humongous beast, and he did NOT want to lug it in).  J also informed him that he had another wire that was about to go, and showed it to him--and the day was saved!!!  By the way, I sampled some--ok a LOT--and holy moly was this stuff good!  It was the texture--they nailed it--and the flavors--nailed it!  WOW!!  I couldn't get enough of this stuff!  

So that leads me to the recipe --I HAD to find a way to have this terrific kettle corn at my disposal, and found this recipe, and ordered a hand-crank, stove-top popper (I went for a stainless steel, as opposed to aluminum model)---J and I worked together (takes a little coordination til you get used to it) to make a couple of batches for the drive-in last night--and the texture was that same incredible perfect texture (just have to work on the right amount of salt--you have to work fast to get it coated, so it was hard to test it:)