>Just toss a handful in the microwave and watch the fun. It takes a
>lot of cleaning up later on though.

I'm not sure if my idea of fun is different but I have just bought my
first microwave oven and threw in some popping corns to see what would
happen .... nothing. Even after 10 mins they stayed ignorant of the
radiation and sat happily on the rotating glass tray.

Then I tried putting a few ml of veg oil in the bottom of a bowl and
about a 100 corns. That made lots of splattering after a few seconds
and covered the inside of the oven with oily mess. I switched it off
and cleaned it oil.

For my third attempt I put the put some oil in a bowl and the same
number of corns and this time covered the top of the bowl with a thin
paper sheet, secured by an elastic band. This kind-of worked, about
half of the corns popped but they were hard to fish out from the oily
residue of unpopped corns at the bottom.

I am just about to give up, I never much liked microwave ovens, nor
saw much use in them, but my girlfriend likes popcorn.

Is there a foolproof method anyone can recommend? Any other uses for
the microwave would also be useful.