Finger Lickin' Good

I was perilously close, last week, to going into a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. The coffee house that we usually hold our Dads' Club meetings was closed for the evening, and we were looking for an alternate venue. Two doors down we could easily have dropped ourselves into a molded plastic booth for an hour or two and nursed a large Pepsi or two because we needed a place to sit. Cooler heads prevailed, and we ended up heading over to a house with a real table and chairs - and real food.
Because that's what the real issue is, after all. Real food. Kentucky Fried Chicken, or KFC as they have become more radically known, has been pioneering new frontiers in food-like food. KFC had dropped "fried" from its name and logo over a decade ago as it expanded its non-fried menu items to appeal to the health conscious. Now they're heading back to the beginning, returning to those eleven herbs and spices that made them famous. Fried is no longer something to be ashamed of - it's a legacy to be embraced and savored. That doesn't mean they're not going to stay on the cutting edge of "food." Take their KFC Famous Bowls, for example: "We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken. Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend. It's all your favorite flavors coming together."
Drizzling crispy mashed and layered all in one bucket? How can I get me some of that? My nearest reckoning has it somewhere at about a dozen years since I went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. They've just redesigned their logo - with bolder colors and a more well-defined visage of the late Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, who will keep his classic black bow tie, glasses and goatee. Don't get me wrong, I'm awfully fond of fast "food." Many decades ago, my younger brother announced our return to civilization by shouting to our assembled family that he had just seen "a Colonel Tucky's!" Welcome home, I must be going.