Thank God it’s Monday, again. I always look forward to Mondays, as they’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, happy Monday.
This year, we got a bonus Monday! 2024 has “53 Chances”, as NationalDay.com advocates (in part), to see the sun rise [and set], or to share your talents with others, or to teach someone a new skill. Personally, I try to inspire others, with the love Mom always shared, in the kitchen, in the home and family, throughout the neighborhood and around the world.
Since I began this blog series in September 2018, I have looked at Mondays as my 52 chances a year in which to share Mom’s legacy of love, re-tell her stories of being the ORIGINAL Secret RecipesTM Detective, and keep her light shining bright.
Whenever I write, I always hope to re-kindle happy memories in people who knew her, as she touched the lives of millions, during her 40+ years of being the ORIGINAL copycat cook and investigator of the Food Industry’s secrets.
I so enjoy hearing from those who’ve stumbled upon my blog posts about Mom and want to share THEIR own memories of her with ME or just want to tell me how much they still enjoy using her cookbooks and newsletters. Whether it was a story or recipe, Mom’s writing was timeless.
Writing was Mom’s legacy of love. She always said that it was her writing with which she made a living but that writing, for her, also made living worthwhile. It gave her so much joy to do what she loved to do and make a comfortable living from it, too.
Mom was a trailblazer in the early 1970s – developing her own recipes for imitating famous foods from famous places and marketing her unique talents through newspapers, magazines, and television talk shows but mostly through radio talk shows nationwide and worldwide.
In the early years of her Secret RecipesTM family business, Mom sold her recipes for a quarter each, printed on 4×6-inch index cards from a mimeograph, which she kept in our laundry room. It didn’t seem to take long before her recipe catalog grew, mostly through requests from her fans, to over 200 recipes.
To keep it manageable, as she developed more and more recipes, she discontinued some recipes in exchange for introducing new ones. Within that first year of business, she decided to start writing a monthly newsletter, as another platform for the new recipes she was continually developing.
After a few years, she retired the individual, 4×6-inch, recipe cards, altogether. However, they were quickly followed by her multiple series of self-published cookbooks; at an average rate of one a year, for over 40 years.
Recollections of how we developed our Secret Recipes and the unique circumstances under which this dining room table operation has endured… will surely never make the best sellers list, and perhaps not even interest most critics, let alone the skeptics. They predicted that the public’s interest in my kind of cookery would not last long. It continues because it has merit! – Gloria Pitzer, The Original 200 Plus Secret Recipes© Book (Secret RecipesTM, Marysville, MI; June 1997, p. 2).
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, pp. 65-66)
RE: WORKING FROM HOME – A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE RECIPE DETECTIVETM
AN ORDINARY DAY for us begins at 6:30 AM. Even though I may have had a midnight or middle of the night radio show to do, the alarm still goes off at the crack of dawn.
I realized some time ago that I could not roll out of bed and go directly to the stove to make the coffee and scramble the eggs and then, upon cleaning up after all of that, still go directly to my drawing board and my IBM composer for the rest of a long day.
I could but I would not have had a good attitude. So, Paul and I go, instead, to the restaurant in the mall downtown and let THEM make the coffee and scramble the eggs for us. Then we stopped by the post office, pick up the mail and by the time we are back home, I feel like a normal working person who leaves the house every morning to go to their office.
Depending on how swamped we are with mail and subscriber contacts, book orders and government papers to be filled out and filed, we try to take a break around noon for… a sandwich at our desks or, better yet, we’ll run down the street to the Burger King for an orange juice and fish sandwich…
Or [we’ll go] over to The Voyageur [restaurant] for half of a ‘Captain’s Salad’ or a croissant special and a view of the St. Clair River, with freighters passing up and down stream. [Then] we can feel truly inspired and refreshed when we leave there.
A break like that will renew our creative energies and also give us a chance to ‘visit’ with each other – a practice that few married couples really seem to enjoy much anymore – if they ever did at all.
These breaking off periods of getting away from the house in our office within, look to others, I suppose, as if we really aren’t that busy that we can frequent the local restaurants as much as we do.
What they don’t see, however, is the kitchen where for three or four solid hours I was testing and trying to develop a particular recipe – making it perhaps three or four times before either giving up on it or feeling victorious and happy to print it in the next newsletter.
We take a lot of kidding about how often I am seen pushing a basket-cart in the local supermarket and how often I am seen ‘eating out’ that you’d ever guess I cooked at all.
It is because I try to maintain and encourage a happy balance between the recipe testing and our normal life with friends and family, that we have never found the enterprise in which we are engaged, a burden to us.
So many people we know do nothing but complain about their jobs, their work and regrets. My cup runneth over and over and over!
By five or six o’clock in the evening were ready for another break and, in between, I have probably talked to two or three radio stations, answering questions for their listeners as they call into the station; which, by the miracle of telephone, puts us in touch with each other as if the host, the listener and I were all in the same room!
The radio visits that began with [our] good friend, Bob Allison, and his very successful show, opened so many interesting and helpful doors for us. All of the other radio stations since, became a part of our schedule after years of providing listeners with the right information, entertaining ideas, friendship and concern for their needs.
Sometimes I have received calls from hosts of radio shows who heard me on another station than their own and asked to set up an hour with them. Some of the programs ran two hours.
Many of them only used 15 minutes, in which to discuss a healthy menu on the latest restaurant dish to imitate at home. No two radio shows are ever exactly alike, yet in one respect they are all incredibly enthusiastic and inquisitive…
A legacy of love is what Secret RecipesTM grew to be, for Mom; and also what it became to me, especially during the last few years of her life, while I helped her to re-write her favorite cookbook so it could be re-published for a new digital generation. These blog posts are my legacy of love, for sharing Mom’s legacy of love.
Aside from her writing, cooking and artistic talents, Mom was a very devout Christian. No matter what problems and struggles were thrown at her, she never lost faith. She always found something from which to learn and grow (as her mom taught her to do).
She often wrote about her faith in her cookbooks and newsletters. She loved to share it with others in hopes of inspiring them. She thought it was a natural fit to sandwich her “food for the soul” editorials in between her “food for the table” recipes.
Mom thought good cookbooks should feed the mind and soul, as well as the body. Thus, that’s how she always wrote her books and newsletters – sharing also her “Food for Thought” editorials and quips, some product and/or company history, as well as little-known-facts and tidbits of information that related to a recipe, category, or subject.
Mom felt blessed for her many fans and followers who kept her inspired, to continue investigating the food industry, with their ongoing requests to find the “secrets” for making their favorite dish or a hard-to-find grocery product at home (plus, at less cost.)
Mom was also very grateful to the media (newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and TV talk shows) that interviewed her, writing and talking about her unique copycat cookery concept. She also appreciated her family – me and my siblings but especially our dad – for supporting and helping her in so many different ways.
LAST THOUGHTS…
Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my memories of my mom, her memories, and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at [email protected]. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective. Next week’s blog post is about the fading Sunday supper tradition.
IN CLOSING…
In honor of TODAY, being National Bacon Day, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for Custardy Williamsburg Cornbread, where a pound of bacon is the headlining star; as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 167). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition)]. As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.
P.S. Food-for-thought until next Monday…
December observes… National Pear Month, National Write A Business Plan Month, Root Vegetables and Exotic Fruits Month, Worldwide Food Service Safety Month, National Human Rights Month, and Universal Human Rights Month – among other things.
Today is also… National Bicarbonate of Soda Day.
Tomorrow is… National Champagne Day, Make Up Your Mind Day, and New Year’s Eve. Plus, being the last work day of the year (for 2024), it’s also… No Interruptions Day. Additionally, from 11:30 p.m. on December 31st to 12:30 a.m. on January 1st of each year, it’s the… Universal Hour of Peace.
Wednesday kicks off the new year. January observances include… National Hobby Month, National Hot Tea Month, National Mentoring Month, National Oatmeal Month, National Slow Cooking Month, National Soup Month, and National Sunday Supper Month.
This week, being the first week of January (for 2025), celebrates, among other things… Diet Resolution Week, Celebration of Life Week, and New Year’s Resolutions Week.
January 1st is also… New Year’s Day, National Bloody Mary Day, and National Hangover Day.
[NOTE: Jan. 1, 1975 – Anniversary of Mom’s appearance with Bob Hines on CKLW-TV Channel 9, Windsor, Ontario (Canada).]
Thursday, January 2nd, is… National Buffet Day and National Cream Puff Day.
Friday, January 3rd, is… National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day and National Fruitcake Toss Day.
January 4th is… National Missouri Day, National Spaghetti Day, and National Trivia Day. Plus, (for 2025) this is also… National Play Outside Day, which is the first Saturday of EVERY MONTH.
Sunday, January 5th, is… National Bird Day, National Keto Day, National Screenwriters Day, and National Whipped Cream Day.
The second week of January celebrates, among other things… National Mocktail Week.
Have a great week and spectacular new year!
…53 down for 2024 and 52 to go for 2025!
