Stove Top Popcorn

I have always thought that making popcorn on the stove was a very difficult thing to do.... you can thank my mother who ruined a good pot by burning the oil/popcorn so bad on the bottom it was black for years....and it was one of those old thick pots with the yellow outside! Our house smelled like burnt popcorn for weeks... I can remember it as if it was yesterday.
Well we have no microwave here in Brazil so I decided I needed to learn how to do this. It would be so much easier while traveling. I don't ever recall actually eating stove top popcorn in my life!
So I did some searching and read a few "recipes" for doing this. After some talking with friends (yes it takes a village to raise this cook!), I decided to go with plain old butter and yellow corn.
What I did:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup yellow popcorn



I started up my gas stove top on high . This alone still freaks me out... I really need to by one of those point and click lighters because I feel I'm going to burn myself every time I use the match...and the fire extinguisher is on the first floor- we are on the 15th! Got a 2 qt pot and put my 1/4 cup of butter in it and 3 kernels and just kind of moved the pot over the flame. I watched my butter get a little brown and wondered if I was already screwing up. But then one of my kernels popped...and I might add scared the crap out of me! Then I added the 1 cup corn, put on the lid and continued to shake pot. I was so excited when it started popping. I'm such a little kid. After a couple moments I realized my 2 qt pan wasn't big enough because popcorn started pouring out (and then starting on fire since the flame was still going). I quickly dumped some on to a near by cookie sheet and continued to pop. I have no idea how your suppose to tell when the kernels are all done. I had plenty of popcorn so I decided that was good. After eating most of it I realized I had about 1/4 cup of kernels still at the bottom  of the pot but the bottom was also dry. So if your reading this...do I need to put more butter in next time and keep the bottom with butter to get that last bit to pop? Or do I need to just pop longer? I was nervous of burning it. I think my 3/4 cups of kernels that did pop probably made about 8 cups of popcorn. Next time I need to only do 1/2 cup of kernels. Luckily London LOVES plain popcorn...so he got a little pot of it. I love butter...so I heated up some more butter and then covered mine in salt. Oh yummy goodness! I don't think I can go back to microwave ever again.