11 Herbs and spices code cracked?

Ron Douglas is probably one of my boyfriend's favorite people next to me of course. I think I was dating him for hardly a week when he started sending me the link to recipesecrets.net. "You can make a McDonalds milkshake!" My boyfriend was dating a pastry chef and he was sending me the recipe for a McDonalds milkshake. And people wonder why most Americans don't appreciate good food anymore.

In all fairness there really is something to be said for being able to make something you really like in a restaurant at home. It is pretty impressive to be able to have the taste and knowledge to know how to duplicate a recipe. Of course, what my boyfriend failed to recognize, was that the person who originally created the milkshake was actually far more impressive than this man who, at times, used shiesty methods to crack famous recipes.

Douglas was a finance manager who saw a need. He wanted to learn the KFC secret recipe and in his internet wanderings he found a whole lot of people who wanted to learn their favorite restaurants secret recipes. Douglas started his website, recipesecrets.net, and began cracking the codes. He used every tactic imaginable from feigning food allergies to ordering takeout in order to dissect the food in the privacy of his home. He actually did succeed and began selling his recipes. He quit his job, hired two cooks to help him out, and got a book deal with Simon and Schuster who just recently published his first book of recipes.

Douglas started looking for KFC's original recipe, and in this book it looks like he has cracked the code. Surprisingly KFC is not terribly worried; I guess a lot of people claim to crack their code. Douglas is pretty good though. Just ask my boyfriend, supposedly that milkshake tasted just like it did at McDonalds. Honestly I can't imagine that even if Douglas cracked the code KFC would lose much business. Not many people want to go through all of the work to make what they could buy in 5 minutes. Still the idea of the Colonel's secret recipe cracked is pretty impressive.

Douglas's book America's Most Wanted Recipes is actually only $9 on amazon.com. That's a lot less than it would cost you to go out to eat, so maybe give it a shot, stay in and try some of the recipes that your favorite restaurants would feed you if you felt like spending the money. All of us have more time with the economy the way it is, so it couldn't hurt to give it a try. If you try the KFC recipe, let me know how it goes.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily