As always, thank God it’s Monday. I look forward to this day every week, as Mondays are my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, happy Monday.
Yesterday was National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. Plus, Wednesday begins the month of April, which observes National Couple Appreciation Month. Thus, today’s post is about the couple I appreciate the most – my mom and dad (or pop), who owned and operated their business, together, from 1974 to 2014.
Originally, their cottage-style operation was, literally, a dining-room-table publishing and mail-order business; featuring Mom’s not-so-secret, copycat recipes for imitating “famous foods from famous places”.
In the early years of her “Secret RecipesTM” business, they sold Mom’s recipes, individually, for 25-cents each or five-for-a-dollar. They were printed on 4×6-inch index cards, from a mimeograph Mom kept in our laundry room – trying to hide the operation from Dad during the first year, until she could show him it was profitable.
At first, Mom “spread the word” through local radio “talk” programs that were geared toward homemakers, like herself. Her copycat cookery concept was groundbreaking. There was nothing else like it at that time so the idea spread like wildfire. By the way, it’s still National Women’s History Month, too.
Eventually, Mom had to tell Dad what she was doing when he went to work every day because her first TV talk show interview was scheduled to be on my 10th birthday, in November (1974).
She quickly built up a fan base, as well as an index of more than 200 recipes from their endless requests. She had to cap her catalog at that point, so as to not get too overwhelmed by the number of recipes to keep printed and on file for orders.
As more new recipes developed, Mom started to delete titles that weren’t selling as well as others. A dozen or so other titles that were selling very well she put on a sheet of “Free Sample Recipes”, which she offered in exchange for a self-addressed stamped envelope. Mom said, “Who doesn’t like to try free samples, before committing to buying something?”
Her inventory of recipes never stopped growing. Their business grew, too, going from the index cards to monthly newsletters and multiple cookbooks in the blink of an eye. For 40 years, Mom and Dad worked together, side-by-side, every day – until Dad passed away in October 2014. This is part of their story, from Mom’s favorite cookbook…
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, pp. 292-293). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition)].
[HOW SECRET RECIPESTM BEGAN]
“PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR OF secret recipes” and “The Recipe Detective” are the names that my friends in radio and newspapers have given to me, and I enjoy living up to that assignment! I enjoy working with these recipe secrets, but most of all, I enjoy writing about them…
During those [early] years [1956-1966]… I kept up with my writing, always working for one of the suburban papers and constantly free-lancing to magazines… Redbook sent me $500 for my “Young Mother’s Story” submission, in February 1963, called “We’ll Never Live with In-Laws Again”.
I put part of the money into a typewriter, as I had always had to borrow one before that. I wanted a typewriter more than Reagan wanted to be president! I put a lot of miles on that $39.95 machine – I designed a column for weekly newspapers and mailed out samples to over 300 newspapers.
Within a year, I had acquired 60 regular papers for my “No Laughing Matter” column and another column I called “Minding the Hearth”. Columbia Features in New York offered me a contract, and, for a year, I allowed them to syndicate the column in competition with a new humorist, Erma Bombeck! (Right church, wrong pew for me!)
When a big city paper carried Erma’s column, Columbia placed mine in their competing paper. I split with Columbia on a 60/40 basis (I took 40) and finally, by mutual-agreement, we broke the contract. I was on my own…
Within 6 months, I… was syndicating the column from our dining room table… We then lived in what my friend, Bob Allison, called “beautiful downtown Pearl Beach”. “A town so small”, I told people; “City Hall was over a Dairy Queen, our McDonald’s had only one arch and, if we had a Howard Johnson’s, it would’ve had only 3 flavors!”
We had a 9-year old station wagon at that time. It burned oil and barely got Paul to work and back without something breaking down! I rode a bike to and from the Pearl Beach post office every day where I mailed out my columns and then looked for responses to ads I had placed… for recipes on 4×6-inch cards…
BOB ALLISON’S “ASK YOUR NEIGHBOR”
I WAS A REGULAR participant on Bob Allison’s “Ask Your Neighbor” radio show that aired 5 days a week for 2 hours in the morning. I used Bob’s program for asking for food information that I needed for my weekly columns.
Bob’s audience was very helpful in supplying me with answers. To reciprocate, I would reply to some of the requests made by his audience when they called into Bob’s show. It was a unique format in that one could not simply call in a recipe or information simply because they wanted to share it with others.
The information or the recipe had to, first, be requested by a previous caller. Many of my first “Secret Recipes” were developed because of requests made specifically by Bob’s callers for such dishes as The Colonel’s secret spices, Arthur Treacher’s fish batter, Sander’s hot fudge, Win Schuler’s bar cheese and so on…
I had published some of my 1st attempts at duplicating famous dishes in that column and the response was beautiful, until I offended one of the papers biggest advertisers with a rendition of their cheesecake…
The editor told me I would have to go back to standard recipes like macaroni and cheese, meatloaf or chocolate cake – or I could pick up my check. I told him to MAIL it to me. That’s when I decided it was time to launch my own paper… That was the beginning of “Secret Recipes”!
MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, pp. 296-297). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition)].
THE FIRST TELEVISION APPEARANCE
IT WAS THE WORST possible time to launch a new business. The unemployment rate was terribly high. There was a newsprint paper shortage. There was a gasoline shortage. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to at least try to have my own publication. It was something I had always wanted to do.
I couldn’t tell Paul. I knew that! He would have been far too practical to have approved of my starting my own paper, so I enlisted the help of our children. I was taking in ironing at the time, at $5 a basket, and sometimes earned as much as $50 a week.
The money was supposed to supplement Paul’s paycheck, which – as soon as we found could make ends meet – we discovered somebody had moved the ends. So, I took what money I could from the ironing earnings and bought a mimeograph.
I kept it in a big box in the utility room under my sewing table. Paul would hardly pay attention to what I wanted him to think was only sewing paraphernalia. For 9 months, I mimeograph, assembled and mailed out about 100 copies a month of my newsletter.
Bill and Mike helped assemble it and Debbie help me test the recipes and address the copies. I don’t know how we ever kept it from Paul for that long, but I couldn’t tell him what I was doing until I could assure him that I could make a profit. All I was doing was breaking even.
Then Dennis Wholley, at Channel 7 in Detroit, called and said somebody had sent him a copy of my newsletter. He was tickled with the crazy names I gave the recipes and the home-spun format. He wanted the entire family to be his guests on his “A.M. Detroit” show, on November 14 – which was also our Laura’s birthday.
I couldn’t keep it from Paul any longer, because I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to promote the paper on a popular local television show. He took it quite well, considering the state of shock he must have been in at my announcement.
But we took all 5 of the kids with us across town, in a blizzard yet, with Laura having a bout of car-sickness during the hour’s drive there. And, during that experience, we met Coleman Young, the recently elected mayor of Detroit, who was also a guest on the show.
All of Pearl Beach must have been tuned into “A.M. Detroit” that morning, with half of the population gathered at the Pearl Beach post office, watching the portable set there.
It brought us many new orders for our newsletter, and it wasn’t long before CKLW’s Bob Heinz asked us to appear on his show on New Year’s Day. We, again, took the family over to Windsor, Ontario – across the Detroit River – for another exciting experience and hundreds of letters that followed, wanting to subscribe to the newsletter.
By that time, Paul was giving me every evening of his time when he came home from his own job at the sign company, plus all the weekends just to fill the orders. My list of “Secret Recipes” had grown to 200 and we offered them, on 4×6-inch cards [that I printed on my mimeograph], at $.25 each or 5 for a dollar.
It was quite a packaging process to fill the combinations of orders, so [in 1975] I put all those recipes into a book. It was going to be our “only” book on the subject, since most of the recipes were “fast foods” – but, as it turned out, [after revising it, to avoid copyright infringements] it was only the first of a series of five books.
After “Book One” took off and became a very good seller, I did a Bicentennial American Cookery book as a limited edition and was pleased when the Henry Ford Library at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan ordered copies for their Bicentennial collection.
That was July 1976. Paul was going to quit his job… [He] gave his boss two weeks’ notice and left his job of 20 years, to devote full time to helping me with the recipes and the newsletter. The subscriptions had increased from less than 100 to over 3000 in a few months…
Once the [Detroit] Free Press carried our recipes on a regular basis, the wire services picked up interest in my recipes and the National Enquirer sent a photographer and free-Lance writer to interview us.
While there were 100 or more newspapers carrying stories about our recipe duplications, I must admit, that the article in the National Enquirer was probably the most accurate. They were very thorough in putting the story together.
There wasn’t even one mistake in the recipes, which many papers made in typographical errors of sorts. The free-lance writer of that story, in the National Inquirer, was Carole Eberly, [1983] publisher of the Michigan Journal and author of a collection of recipes from Michigan.
The story goes on, in Mom’s cookbook, for several more pages – of which I’ve shared different excerpts in other blog posts about her and Dad’s “Mom and Pop business” experiences, over the years; including being on the “Phil Donahue Show”, in July 1981; from which we received over a million letters, in response to their “Free Recipes” offer.
LAST THOUGHTS…
Since April 5th is Easter Sunday, check out the Crafts tab (starting Wednesday, the 1st) for Mom’s easy directions on how to make a bunny shaped cake. Also, starting Wednesday, in honor of National Humor Month, is the introduction of another new tab, “No Laugh ‘N Matter” by Gloria Pitzer, with monthly posts of Mom’s satirical editorials.
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 therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.
IN CLOSING…
In honor of March, being Irish-American Heritage Month, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Colcannon”; as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipes Newsletter (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Mar.-Apr. 1987, p. 2). As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.
P.S. Food-for-thought until next Monday…
The month of March celebrates… National Caffeine Awareness Month, National Celery Month, National Craft Month, National Flour Month, National Sauce Month, and more.
Unofficially, it’s also Maple Sugaring Month. It’s not a national or federal holiday but making maple syrup is a big event in Michigan, as well as in the rest of the northeastern U.S. and its Canadian neighbors. See Michigan State University’s Extension’s website, for March is Maple Syrup Season in Michigan.
Today is also… National Take a Walk in the Park Day, National I Am in Control Day, National Pencil Day, National Turkey Neck Soup Day, and National Virtual Vacation Day.
Tomorrow is… National Bunsen Burner Day, National Clams on the Half Shell Day, National Crayon Day, and National Tater Day.
Wednesday begins the month of April, which observes… National Month of Hope, Keep America Beautiful Month, Lawn and Garden Month, National Fresh Celery Month, National Garden Month, National Soft Pretzel Month, National Soy Foods Month, National Pecan Month, Scottish-American Heritage Month, and more.
April 1st is also… April Fool’s Day, National One Cent Day, and National Sourdough Bread Day. Plus, as the first Wednesday in April (for 2026), it’s also… National Walking Day. Additionally, April 1st to 9th (for 2026) is… Passover.
April 2nd is… National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Plus, as the first Thursday in April (for 2026), it’s also… National Burrito Day.
April 3rd is… National Chocolate Mousse Day. Plus, it’s also… Good Friday (for 2026), which changes annually.
April 4th is… National Chicken Cordon Bleu Day, National Hug a Newsperson Day, National School Librarian Day, and National Vitamin C Day. Plus, as the first Saturday in April (for 2026), it’s also… National Love Our Children Day, National Play Outside Day (which is the first Saturday of every month), and National Handmade Day.
Sunday, April 5th, is… National Caramel Day, National Deep Dish Pizza Day, National Nebraska Day, and National Raisin and Spice Bar Day. Plus,(for 2026) it’s… Easter Sunday.
Have a great week!
…13 down, 39 to go!
