This morning, I read an article about Colonel
Sanders. Apparently, he didn't like KFC's fried chicken.
Oh, he thought highly of his original secret recipe, but the corporation that bought his baby changed the recipe to speed production or save money or something.
He was furious.
Which is understandable. KFC wasn't serving KFC. Whatever reputation he was living on was being sold out from under him one weak fried chicken part at a time.
It occurred to me that I've never had a real piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Every bucket was just a counterfeit, a cheap facsimile of the author's intent.
That same notion probably occurred to the Colonel. After he lost control of KFC, he opened up a new restaurant in his wife's name - Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky - where they supposedly follow the original recipe and endeavor to restore his reputation.
Maybe I'll make it there some day and try the real thing, but this Sanders story alone probably wouldn't have been enough to get me to write this post after such a long hiatus. No, that inspiration came along this evening, when I opened a new container of sour cream.
I've been under the weather, and my friend screenwriter Krista Suh dropped off some homemade southwestern chicken soup and a container of sour cream to dollop on top. The soup was fantastic, but I'm here to write about the sour cream.
I've had plenty of Breakstone's and Knudsen and Daisy and whatnot, and more than my share of French onion dip, but I'd apparently never had real sour cream before. I opened the container - OrganicValley Sour Cream, a brand I wasn't familiar with - only to discover its contents looking overly thick and slightly hardened along the top.
It looked less creamy than any sour cream I had ever seen before. It looked almost like a really soft feta, like it might crumble a bit. I thought it had gone bad.
The first thing I did was check the expiration date. Still good for three more weeks.
I took a taste.
It was sour cream, but the operative word was cream. Rich, intense cream. Much richer and much more intense than any sour cream I had ever had.
I read the label: milk, cream, Acidophilus and Bifidus Cultures. Pure sour cream. Real sour cream.
No carrageenan, no guar gum, no modified food starch. No fillers, no flavoring. Sour cream tastes pretty good even with all that extra crap in it, but this stuff was much better.
Now I'm not saying it was the best sour cream in the world, or anything like that. I haven't done enough research to sustain that kind of superlative. But it was remarkably good. And it was the best sour cream I've ever had. So here I am revisiting this blog.
What made the sour cream noteworthy? I'm guessing the lack of artificial ingredients played an important role, but I don't know if that's my main takeaway.
In the days ahead, I'll probably be looking out for more opportunities for gustatory improvement, and I'll probably be more inclined to pass over the imitations and knockoffs, even on foods that don't obviously seem to be worth the upgrade. And I guess I found a new brand of sour cream, which is always nice to share with the internet. But maybe the biggest takeaway is that for one magical moment, my expectations were shattered. And using a gloopy dollop of sour cream to shatter anything, well, that's a feat worth blogging about.
Oh, he thought highly of his original secret recipe, but the corporation that bought his baby changed the recipe to speed production or save money or something.
He was furious.
Which is understandable. KFC wasn't serving KFC. Whatever reputation he was living on was being sold out from under him one weak fried chicken part at a time.
It occurred to me that I've never had a real piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Every bucket was just a counterfeit, a cheap facsimile of the author's intent.
That same notion probably occurred to the Colonel. After he lost control of KFC, he opened up a new restaurant in his wife's name - Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky - where they supposedly follow the original recipe and endeavor to restore his reputation.
Maybe I'll make it there some day and try the real thing, but this Sanders story alone probably wouldn't have been enough to get me to write this post after such a long hiatus. No, that inspiration came along this evening, when I opened a new container of sour cream.
I've been under the weather, and my friend screenwriter Krista Suh dropped off some homemade southwestern chicken soup and a container of sour cream to dollop on top. The soup was fantastic, but I'm here to write about the sour cream.
I've had plenty of Breakstone's and Knudsen and Daisy and whatnot, and more than my share of French onion dip, but I'd apparently never had real sour cream before. I opened the container - OrganicValley Sour Cream, a brand I wasn't familiar with - only to discover its contents looking overly thick and slightly hardened along the top.
It looked less creamy than any sour cream I had ever seen before. It looked almost like a really soft feta, like it might crumble a bit. I thought it had gone bad.
The first thing I did was check the expiration date. Still good for three more weeks.
I took a taste.
It was sour cream, but the operative word was cream. Rich, intense cream. Much richer and much more intense than any sour cream I had ever had.
I read the label: milk, cream, Acidophilus and Bifidus Cultures. Pure sour cream. Real sour cream.
No carrageenan, no guar gum, no modified food starch. No fillers, no flavoring. Sour cream tastes pretty good even with all that extra crap in it, but this stuff was much better.
Now I'm not saying it was the best sour cream in the world, or anything like that. I haven't done enough research to sustain that kind of superlative. But it was remarkably good. And it was the best sour cream I've ever had. So here I am revisiting this blog.
What made the sour cream noteworthy? I'm guessing the lack of artificial ingredients played an important role, but I don't know if that's my main takeaway.
In the days ahead, I'll probably be looking out for more opportunities for gustatory improvement, and I'll probably be more inclined to pass over the imitations and knockoffs, even on foods that don't obviously seem to be worth the upgrade. And I guess I found a new brand of sour cream, which is always nice to share with the internet. But maybe the biggest takeaway is that for one magical moment, my expectations were shattered. And using a gloopy dollop of sour cream to shatter anything, well, that's a feat worth blogging about.
