I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that all kettle corn is probably the same. This is the last stall at the Farmers Market, 2:30–5:30 Saturdays in Morro Bay. My idea is that someone dreamed up kettle corn and everyone since that day has merely copied it. I’d go so far as to say that you could probably buy products from a supplier that guarantee your made-on-the-street kettle corn is the best in the world. Which would mean that all kettle corn, or almost all, is the best there is.

My mother was a very fastidious cook. Her recipes were thought through and measured with exactness. Her bake goods were to die for. She made the best banana cream pie in the entire world, bar none. It got to be an embarrassment. In the 50s it was common to have pot luck dinners. Today you’d have to assign women to McDonald’s or Burger King, or maybe a local pizza parlor. When my mother brought banana cream pie it became obvious that women were flocking to the desert end of the table before slowly moving back for the entree. Her lemon meringue pie had much the same effect. She taught school all day, so she didn’t spend her waking hours in the kitchen. But when she made something special, alchemy was involved.

I remember a turning point in the family life. There must have been others that I was too young to realize. My father came home one night with a store-bought apple pie and a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream. After the first bite he said, “This is the best apple pie I have ever had.” After that, baking anything my father was likely to eat was off the agenda. What she didn’t understand, or care to understand, was that every bite of apple pie, no matter where it came from, was the best my father ever had. There was nothing in the world as good as apple pie and ice cream, and nothing more insensitive than his remarks.

So, it’s possible that the kettle corn I’m eating as I type this is just kettle corn, and I gave you a reason why that might be true, but it’s also possible that it really is as good as I think it is. It's a very long week between Farmers Markets, and no matter what I do, I never have enough kettle corn to get me all the way through Saturday, no matter how I dole it out. The world of food works in mysterious ways.