The Love Bucket

This month is the 40th anniversary of the first bucket of chicken to be sold by Kentucky Fried Chicken (it was at a Salt Lake City branch). KFC is celebrating with a contest for those who got married in 1957--and are still married. Send them the secret of your successful marriage and you could win a second honeymoon cruise (your choice, Caribbean or Mississippi River by steamboat); 40 second-place winners will get enough KFC food for a 40th anniversary party with 40 guests. Address your letter or postcard to Buckets of Love Contest, care of OA&R;, 1901 L Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036.

Golden Anniversary for Aluminum

And this year is the 50th anniversary of aluminum foil. It was in 1947 that Reynolds Aluminum started marketing foil for home use (the original idea in the early ‘40s had been that large commercial kitchens would be the market).

It’s hard to imagine our world now without aluminum foil, but it wasn’t a self-evident thing at first. Home economist Eleanor Lynch was the one who proved that aluminum foil could be a viable product and developed the recipes and uses for it. The production line workers at the first aluminum foil plant in Louisville, Ky., were mostly women, and some of them were so jazzed about this new convenience that they went door to door talking to housewives about it.

Vroom, Vroom Food

You may have noticed the billboards for Harley-Davidson cigarettes (we always hoped they’d use the slogan “Burnin’ rubber!”). The 74-year-old motorcycle company has also lent its name to the Harley-Davidson Cafe, which opened in Las Vegas yesterday. It’s right in the middle of the Strip, near the MGM Grand and New York New York--appropriate, because the first Harley-Davidson Cafe opened in New York, N.Y., four years ago.

The cafe, which is hard to miss with its 28-foot-high replica of a Heritage Softail Classic, is a sort of Planet Hollywood for motorcycle fans. Here’s biker memorabilia from Elvis, Ann-Margret and Billy Joel; over there’s the motorcycle from the movie “Easy Rider.” You can sit on a Harley and rev it. A sort of fashion show of Harleys moves along on a conveyor belt through the dining room.

But you want to know about the food. Well, it’s modern diner stuff--Mexican snacks, pot stickers, burgers and dogs, barbecue and pasta, veggie pitas and the like with bikerish names (Thundering Chili, Hi-Octane Fajitas). The place is available for conventions and meetings, by the way.