As I got older the Sunday dinner menu changed, but we still took the time to sit together, eat, and socialize. I can't pinpoint the exact time, but the family dinner started to drift off to when it was only holidays or special occasions, and now maybe one meal when I travel home to visit once or twice a year.
Do other American families still have a Sunday dinner or even dinner together of the evening through the week any more? In today's ever busying society, I know many people who never cook everything they eat comes from a fast food place or is a frozen meal. Are people like me a dying breed? I personally love to make a big meal and have my friends and family come sit, eat, and socialize with me.
Today I am making a meatloaf...something I have covered here before. I am also making several side dishes to go with it and have invited friends over. I hope they show up. Then My roommate, friends, and I can sit down and share a Sunday meal, like I used to back in the day.
Who was Colonel Sanders?
Harland David "Colonel" Sanders was an American fast food businessman who founded the Kentucky Fried Chicken company, now re-branded as KFC. His image remains iconic in KFC promotions.
At the age of 40, Sanders cooked chicken dishes and other meals for people who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served customers in his adjacent living quarters. His local popularity grew, and Sanders moved to a motel and 142 seat restaurant, later Harland Sanders Café and Museum. Over the next nine years he developed his "secret recipe" for frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooked the chicken much faster than pan frying.
Sanders was given the honorary title "Kentucky Colonel" in 1935 by Governor Ruby Laffoon. He was "re-commissioned" in 1950 by Governor Lawrence Wetherby.
It wasn't until 1950 that Sanders began developing his distinctive appearance, growing his trademark mustache and goatee and donning a white suit and string tie. He never wore anything else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer.
At age 65, Sanders' store having failed due to the new Interstate 75 reducing his restaurant's customer traffic, he took $105 from his first Social Security check and began visiting potential franchisees.
Dave Thomas, later founder of Wendy's Old Fashioned Burgers, was offered a chance to turn around a failing Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. He helped save the restaurant, and revolutionized the fast food industry by simplifying its menu from nearly one hundred items to just basic fried chicken and salads.
Sanders later used his stockholdings to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, which used the proceeds to aid charities and fund scholarships. His trusts continue to donate money to groups like the Trillium Health Care Centre; a wing of their building specializes in women's and children's care and has been named after him. The Sidney, British Columbia based foundation granted over $1,000,000 in 2007, according to its 2007 tax return.
Sanders died in Louisville, Kentucky, of pneumonia on December 16, 1980. He had been diagnosed with acute leukemia the previous June. His body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol; after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Seminary Chapel attended by more than 1,000 people. He was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
Since his death, Sanders has been portrayed by voice actors in Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials in radio and an animated version of him has been used for television commercials.
