By Steve Huffman
Salisbury Post
The irony, said Blanch Basinger, is that she’s a very good cook.
No brag, just fact. Ask anyone who knows Blanch and they’ll tell you the same.
So it was odd last Saturday when Blanch served a dessert at a baby shower at her church, Luther’s Lutheran in Richfield, and people said immediately that something was amiss.
“Nobody got sick,” Blanch said. “They just kidded me about it.”
The dessert, a congealed salad called “Strawberry Delight” … well, it wasn’t good.
“It was no delight for the church, honey,” said Blanch’s daughter, Kay Hendrix, laughing as she spoke.
And so Blanch, 76, went back to her house off Stokes Ferry Road in the far eastern part of Rowan County and examined the likely culprit ó a 5-pound bag of Dixie Crystal sugar. A cup and a half was used in the dessert.
Blanch tasted the sugar and something about it wasn’t right.
It’s hard to explain, but the bag didn’t contain sugar. And it wasn’t table salt. But it was something with a salty flavor.
“She’s precise with her cooking, so I knew something was wrong,” said Angie Basinger, Blanch’s daughter-in-law.
The bag was produced by Imperial Sugar Co. in Sugar Land, Texas. Blanch bought the bag from Lentz’s General Store, not far from her Rowan County home. She said the folks at Lentz’s said the bag came from Wal-Mart.
Paul Coulkins, a spokesman for Imperial Sugar, said the company sent Blanch a plastic bag and a self-addressed stamped envelope for her to send a sampling of the tainted sugar.
Or whatever it is.
“This is definitely strange,” Coulkins said Wednesday.
He got a code from Blanch’s bag and said it was produced in May. Coulkins said most of the product would have already been consumed by now and said he’d heard of no complaints similar to Blanch’s.
He promised Blanch that he’d let her know what the bag contained as soon as an analysis was complete.
Coulkins said the sugar is bagged by a fast-moving conveyer belt and said it would be almost impossible for anyone to intentionally tamper with the product in the factory.
“If someone stuck their hand in there, it’d cut it off,” Coulkins said.
Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4222 or shuffman@salisburypost.com.