Hoosier snacks.

• Author: Keaton, Joanne
• Position: Indiana made snack foods - Made In Indiana

You're at home on a cold February night. You don a favorite heavy sweater and light a fire. Maybe you'll watch a video, listen to some old record albums or read a book.

It could be a perfect evening, but something is missing. Where are the snacks? Before you rush out to buy just any munchies for those cozy hours, consider choosing some made in Indiana.

Why not start with popcorn? Indiana grows more popcorn than any other state in the union. Greg Finch, until recently Indiana's deputy commissioner of agriculture, says there are good reasons Hoosiers produce 28 percent of the crop. Indiana has an optimal climate, and popcorn likes the deep, fertile, organically based soil found in the northern part of the state. Purdue University led research in popcorn-seed development early in the century.

Weaver Popcorn Co. of Van Buren is the world's largest producer and processor of popcorn. Weaver developed its own hybrids. You may have tried Weaver's popcorn without knowing it, for it sells to concession businesses, supplying more popcorn to theaters than anyone else. Look for the names Pop Weaver and Original Movie Popcorn.

Orville Redenbacher's popcorn comes from Valparaiso. The regular yellow popcorn leads the white in sales, but packaged microwave popcorn is outselling that old standard in the jar. The company is pleased with the reception of single-serving microwave packs in video stores. You can fantasize you're in a warm climate when you eat the Redenbacher brand--it's the official popcorn of Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Popcorn oils and salts and a sugar-coated corn from an old German recipe are among the products of Topeka's Yoder Popcorn. Basically a processor--Yoder contracts with farmers to grow the corn--the company packages for theaters and concessionaires. Microwave corn also comes from Yoder.

Merry Poppin and TV Time are popcorn brands from TV Time Foods in Bremen. It's another company in both the regular and microwave popcorn markets.

A believer in traditional popcorn, Herbert Gettelfinger of Palmyra's Gettelfinger Popcorn Co., says the newer microwave style "is not all it's cracked up to be." He finds the microwave versions "convenient but very expensive: 70 to 80 percent of the cost you throw in the wastebasket." Gettelfinger stresses that any popcorn--not just the kind billed for microwaving--can be prepared in a microwave oven. Spee-Dee Pop and Gettelfinger's Selected Popcorn are among his company's brands.

Can you imagine 56...