We're about to learn a little more about Colonel Harland Sanders, the man behind the KFC fast-food chain, more than three decades after his death.

A KFC employee, rummaging around the company's archives, has uncovered a secret manuscript written by Sanders that promises to offer "real old-time American country and farm cooking before it's forgotten."

The book includes recipes for omelets, pancakes, casseroles, pies and bread -- but it doesn't have the top-secret directions for the concoction of 11 herbs and spices that helped make KFC's chicken famous. KFC, owned by Yum Brands (YUM), is still keeping that one to itself.

KFC plans to publish the whole book for free on its website next year.

"This is a new kind of book," Sanders wrote in the first chapter of the book, according to ABC News. "There's never been another written like it as far as I know. It's the story of a man's life and the story of the food he's cooked and eaten, running right along with it."KFC reportedly is keeping the manuscript locked in a vault -- right next to the Colonel's secret chicken recipe -- at its Louisville headquarters, the Associated Press reports.

The company thinks Sanders probably wrote it around 1965, a year or so after he sold his interest in Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million. He died in 1980 at age 90.

Here are more lines from Sanders' manuscript:

• "I've only had two rules. Do all you can and do it the best you can. It's the only way you ever get that feeling of accomplishing something."

• "I've read hundreds of cookbooks. For my money they are the bird."

• Some of his recipes "are worth more than all the imported recipes, with names an ordinary man or woman can't even pronounce, put together."

• "The way I see it, if you've bought this book, you've bought yourself a bargain."

• "I'm making room in these pages for real old-time American country and farm cooking before it's forgotten. I was a farm boy and lean toward farm cooking.  To me, my recipes are priceless."