Know when to hold em', know when to fold 'em, know when to add the corn
(featuring all his greatest hits!)

Kenny Rogers, country crooner who's decorated many a life, and one of the original developers of KFC, started a chain in 1991, featuring wood-fired rotisserie chicken, called Kenny Rogers Roasters. But you know what happens when you fall in love with a dreamer: despite being featured in an episode of Seinfeld, the chain went bankrupt. Apparently there were not enough jilted men with four hungry children and a crop in the field eating chicken (too bad there aren't four hundred children, which would logically make it an orphanage, right?). You can't outrun the long arm of the law, so in 1999 it was sold to Nathan's, the hot dog people. They kept the name, even though Kenny Rogers reportedly wanted to drop all association with the restaurants. Just let it go, Kenny: it won’t mean you’re weak if you turn the other cheek (I hope you’re old enough to understand).

While I have yet to see Kenny Roasters anywhere in the States, it is well-established in Asia. Through the years, it's never let them down (it's turned their lives around!). So when my dad, my brother, and I went to the Philippines last December, guess what my uncle Arthur and cousin Armi treated us to? Some darn good chicken. Really! It's very tasty. Maybe even better than KFC. I remember it so well sometimes it still walks over fields of my mind (I loved it then and I love it now).


We can't reproduce the chicken here, but who knows maybe on some special night, if my recipe's right, I will find a way, find a way... to make the same corn muffins.

Kenny Rogers Roasters Corn Muffins
(from Top Secret Recipes)

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup frozen yellow corn

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cream together butter, sugar, honey, eggs and salt in a large bowl.
3. Add flour, cornmeal and baking powder and blend thoroughly. Add milk while mixing.
4. Add corn to mixture and combine until corn is worked in.
5. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan and fill each cup with batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until muffins begin to turn brown on top.