This is my downstairs freezer. It has somehow become a shrine to 569/Knoxville-milled White Lily. Which I know, is silly. But I’m just that way.
Shug and I took a quick trip to Target last week to pick up some pics that I ordered through Flickr to be processed. Since we were already there we went over to where the flour was and found White Lily with the new non-Knoxville mill code (if you are new to the White Lily thing, there’s more at the June ’08 archives). The mill code was not 569 (Knoxville), it was 501 – already.
Okay so this is just a quick post for all of you (and I really was surprised there were so many of you who felt like I did, but yay!) who emailed about getting the code for Knoxville White Lily – the stores are already getting in the new product. We went this weekend and stocked up. Which…it was a lot, and it involved three different grocery stores. Um, the slightly embarrassing pic of it all is above! I know it is crazy but there is a part of me that is afraid nothing will ever turn out the exact-same way it used to, so I stocked up for me, for friends, and for family. If, you know, the world comes to an end, I guess we can all survive on frozen White Lily.
Last week, I got both a phone call and an email from Smucker’s corporate in response to the email I sent them a few weeks ago, when I asked for the Knoxville code. The phone call was really nice, and they did verify that 569 is the Knoxville code. The email from them didn’t mention the code but went like this:
With a tradition of excellence that spans our more than 110 years of heritage, we take seriously our role as stewards of our high-quality brands. We acquired the White Lily brand in 2006 from C.H. Guenther & Sons, Inc. Guenther retained ownership of the Knoxville milling facility in addition to their other U.S. milling locations.
Throughout its history the ownership of the White Lily brand has changed hands numerous times. Since we acquired the White Lily brand our primary goal has been to restore and return the brand’s historic standard of excellence.
Does anybody know – when did White Lily lose its ‘historic standard of excellence’? And was lost to the point that Smucker’s needed to make it a goal to be restored and returned?
Okay here I am getting silly. I mean, we are talking about flour, not Russian nuclear bomb briefcases.
But you know.
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Oh! And I did buy that bag of 501 so I can see if there’s any difference, like the people in the NY Times article said there was…not that I’m running the Consumer Reports test kitchen here or anything. Now, who wants to do some blind taste-testing!?