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, to everyone.
#TakeOurDaughtersAndSonsToWorkDay
Thursday (for 2025) is National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day and next Sunday is National Tell a Story Day. So it’s a great time to tell you a story about how Mom balanced her work and home lives with a husband, 5 kids, and pets, all in tow. Incidentally, last week celebrated National Columnists’ Day.
For Mom, once she started working from home, every day was Take [her] Daughters and Sons to Work Day. We all helped in one way or another (depending on our ages and abilities) with her “Secret RecipesTM” home-based, mail-order business.
It all started back in early 1970s, just before Mom released her first self-published cookbook, The Better Cooker’s Cookbook (Happy Newspaper Features, Algonac, MI; 1973), compiled from a food column she wrote and syndicated in several papers. The column was called “Cookbook Corner”.
When some of her readers wrote to her, asking for specific recipes – like how to make the cheesecake served at a local restaurant and how to make McDonald’s hamburger sauce – Mom set to work investigating these. She was thrilled to be doing something different from the traditional food column fare.
She started out by taste-testing these products, beginning with a basic recipe, she then picked out their products’ distinct flavors that made them special. From that she developed her own imitations, testing and tweaking until she hit her mark. When she printed them in her column, she received a big, positive response from her readers.
This pleased her editors. But when the cheesecake company seen her imitation of their product, they were upset and threatened to pull their ads from the paper. That’s when Mom’s editors directed her to go back to the ordinary recipes or collect her last check. She told them to mail it to her.
Mom knew better what her readers wanted. She went home and started designing what was to become her own newspaper (aka: newsletter) and recipes mail-order business, “Gloria Pitzer’s Secret RecipesTM”.
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, pp. 6-7). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition).]
IT ALL STARTED WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN
IN THE EARLY 1970s, I was trying to juggle marriage, motherhood, homemaking and a newspaper column syndicated through Columbia Features, when it seemed obvious to me that there wasn’t a single cookbook on the market that could help me take the monotony out of mealtime.
There was not a single recipe in the newspaper’s food section that did not smack of down-home dullness! “Okay,” they said at the newspaper I worked for, “YOU write the column on foods and recipes that YOU think would really excite the readers and make them happy!”
I did, but that didn’t make the Editors happy, because it made their [food industry] advertisers miserable. When I was told that I’d have to go back to monotonous meatloaf and uninteresting side-dishes that made mealtime a ritual rather than a celebration or “pick up my check”, I told them to “MAIL it to me!”
I went home to start my own paper! It was probably a dumb thing to do, amid an economic recession with the highest rate of unemployment I had ever experienced, but it was worth the risk.
I was a dedicated writer that new someone had to give homemakers something more than what they were being given in the colored glossy magazines, where a bowl of library paste could even be photographed to look appetizing!
There had to be more to mealtime than Lima beans and macaroni and cheese with Spam and parsley garnishes. There also had to be more to desserts than chocolate cake recipes that came right off the cocoa can. The food industry gave us more appealing products than did the cookbooks we trusted.
THEY LAUGHED! THEY DOUBTED! They even tried to take me to court when some famous food companies insisted that I stop giving away their secrets. They couldn’t believe me when I said that I did NOT know, nor did I want to know, what they put in their so-called secret recipes.
I did know that there are very few recipes that can’t be duplicated or imitated at home. And we could do them for much less than purchasing the original product. I proved…it can be and should be done!
FAMOUS FOODS FROM FAMOUS PLACES have intrigued good cooks for a long time – even before fast foods of the 1950’s were a curiosity. When cookbooks offer us a sampling of good foods, they seldom devote themselves to the dishes of famous restaurants.
There is speculation among the critics as to the virtues of re-creating, at home, the foods that you can buy “eating out”, such as the fast food fares of the popular franchise restaurants. To each, his own! Who would want to imitate “fast food” at home?
I found that over a million people who saw me demonstrate replicating some famous fast food products on The Phil Donahue Show (July 7, 1981) DID – and their letters poured in at a rate of over 15,000 a day for months on end!
And while I’ve investigated recipes, dishes, and cooking techniques of “fine” dining rooms around the world, I’ve received more requests [for] how to make things like McDonald’s Special Sauce or General Foods Shake-N-Bake coating mix or White Castle’s hamburgers than I’ve received for things like Club 21’s Coq Au Vin.
Mom quickly created and built a collection of recipes for imitating all kinds of famous dishes and food products, which she printed on 4×6-inch index cards with the mimeograph she bought from money she earned by taking in ironing. She sold her recipe cards through the mail for 25 cents each or five for a dollar.
It wasn’t long before she had to cap her recipes’ catalog at about 200 selections. As new ones continued to develop, old ones were retired to make room for them. That’s when Mom progressed into launching a monthly newsletter to showcase more new recipes for imitating grocery products and famous dishes from famous places.
Of course, she wanted to offer more than just recipes so she added her own editorials, household hints, gardening tips, and the like – anything that would interest her target audience, other homemakers like herself.
The food industry offered unlimited possibilities for imitating our favorite foods at home. Within a few years, Mom went from recipe cards to monthly newsletters and multiple cookbooks.
MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 8). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition).]
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
ALTHOUGH I’VE BEEN WRITING longer than I’ve been cooking, the notion to investigate the secrets of the food industry didn’t become a full-time labor-of-love until I was working for a small-town newspaper [about 1971.]
As the only “married lady” on the staff, I was always assigned the food page and recipe column, and I was willing to try the dishes at home and present a column or article about their results to the paper. When you work for a small-town paper, you wear many hats.
You set type, sell advertising, proof read, design headlines, create art work, campaign for subscribers; and, before you know it, you acquire skills you didn’t even know you possessed.
The food department became such a welcomed relief from the local politics that I poured my heart and soul into it, learning some of the essentials of good cooking by default! Everything went well until I initiated an idea to create advertising interest among local restaurants.
It started when I answered a reader’s request in my column for a recipe like McDonald’s “Special Sauce”. I knew it was a kissin’ cousin of a good Thousand Island dressing, so the development of the recipe wasn’t difficult.
The response from our readers was so appreciative that I contacted local restaurants for their advertising in exchange for my printing one of their recipes and menu in my column and a complimentary review of their place.
No one was willing to part with any of their “secrets!” So, I decide to see if I could “guess” how they prepared their specialties of the house. I came across a hotel in town that advertised “home-baked” cheesecake, and I felt they should be telling their customers “homemade.”
The difference to the public is very slight, but they wanted the public to “think” it was homemade, from scratch, when it was, in fact, simply taken from a carton and popped into the oven like brown-and-serve rolls.
That was before our “truth in menu” laws, but no one at the paper wanted to make an issue out of it. The restaurant insisted it was an old family recipe. I said the cheesecake smacked of commercial automation, stainless steel computerized kitchens and the family they referred to was probably that of Sara Lee!
At any rate, that was when I parted company with the paper and set out on my own to create the “Secret Recipe Report”.
Mom kept it all secret from Dad for almost a year, employing us kids to do whatever our various ages could, to help her – taste testing was the best job! We also kept watch for Dad to come home after work so Mom could hide everything before he came in. When she was invited to be on a Detroit TV talk show in late 1974 – she couldn’t hide it anymore.
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.
IN CLOSING…
In honor of next Sunday, being National Devil Dog Day, here are 2 of Mom’s secret, copycat recipes for “Whoopie Pies or Devil Dogs” and “Whoopie Pie Filling”; as seen in her self-published cookbook, Secret Make Alike Recipes – Revised (Secret RecipesTM, Marysville, MI; May 1997, p. 55). As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.
P.S. Food-for-thought until next Monday…
April observes… National Month of Hope, Keep America Beautiful Month, Lawn and Garden Month, National Couple Appreciation Month, National Fresh Celery Month, National Garden Month, National Humor Month, National Soft Pretzel Month, National Soy Foods Month, National Poetry Month, National Pecan Month, National Volunteer Month, Scottish-American Heritage Month, Stress Awareness Month, and National Records and Information Management Month.
Today is… National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day and National Kindergarten Day.
Tomorrow is… National Earth Day, National Girl Scout Leader’s Day, National Jelly Bean Day,
Wednesday, April 23rd, is… National Cherry Cheesecake Day, National Take a Chance Day, and National Picnic Day.
April 24th is also… National Pigs in a Blanket Day. Plus, as the fourth Thursday (for 2025), it’s also… National Teach Children To Save Day.
April 25th is… National DNA Day, National East Meets West Day, National Telephone Day, and National Zucchini Bread Day. Plus, as the last Friday in April (for 2025), it’s also… National Arbor Day.
April 26th is… National Kids and Pets Day, National Pretzel Day, and National South Dakota Day. Plus, as the last Saturday in April (for 2025), it’s also… National Kiss of Hope Day, National Rebuilding Day, and National Sense of Smell Day.
April 27th is… National Prime Rib Day. Plus, as the last Sunday in April (for 2025), it’s also… National Pet Parents Day.
Have a great week!
…16 down and 36 to go!
