microwaveable corn heating pads

They don't use popcorn, for one reason.

They use field corn, dried so there's not much moisture in it, and sometimes cracked already. You could use dried sweet corn, if you wanted.

The reason popcorn pops the way it does is that it has a very tough/hard outer hull, and it's not dried for storage. When the moisture inside the hull expands it 'pops' the hull and turns the kernel inside out. Dry popcorn doesn't pop very well, so popcorn has a much higher moisture content than other corn (except for fresh sweetcorn, which isn't dried at all).

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

I made a corn-filled heating pad because corn was what I had available. This is probably what's special about the corn!

Nope. If no other starchy seed is handy, go to the grocery and buy the cheapest brand of white rice. It works just fine, and the small seeds make a rice bag feel softer than a corn bag.

The corn I used was too stale to pop, which I verified by microwaving a sample before making the bag.

When (years later) I dumped the corn into a strainer so I could sift the dust out and wash the cover, I found that three or four of the kernels had sorta half-popped, and picked them out before putting the sifted corn back into the newly-washed cover. Since half-popped "corn nuts" appear to have been made of field corn, I don't think buying field corn would have prevented this. And the damaged kernels didn't hurt anything anyway.

Most field corn has sharp corners from being packed tightly together on the cob, and field corn is much larger than popcorn, so I think I'd have bought rice if I'd had a bag of unwanted field corn instead of the stale popcorn.

I have seen microwave bags filled with cracked corn, which is readily available as scratch feed for chickens, who can't swallow the large kernels whole.

If you have your heart set on corn, go to a suburban "farm" store or a large-pet store, where you'll find corn sold for feeding squirrels and horses. Corn must be picked by hand if you want it still on the cob, so buy horse corn rather than squirrel corn if you can find it sold by the pound. If you buy the expensive squirrel corn, you can shell it by using one ear as a tool to rub the kernels off the other ear. This is tedious work even if you have done it before

-- but field corn is easier to shell than popcorn, because the kernels are large and have square corners.

Joy Beeson

My sister-in-law's sister makes them using dried beans. That would solve the corn problem. She gave me one and it works fine.

Friend of mine has used one for a very long time. Last time she used it she ended up in hospital having skin grafts on the resultant burns. Owing to back problems she has very little sensation and simply didn't feel how hot it was, or how much injury it was causing. Nasty.

Now obviously this situation occurs very rarely - but be careful with these "wheat bags" - they clearly have the potential to be far too hot, if you're not careful enough when heating them and using them.

Hey, I made several, and used Deer Corn, which I bought at Wally World. Advised only 3 minutes on high power. Moomer

Use cracked dry corn- not the whole kind. Most people use rice. Don't overheat either or you can start a fire.