Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Junk Food & Fast Food, BFFs

Happy Monday, again. As always, I LOVE Mondays. They’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you.

#TheRecipeDetective

#NationalJunkFoodDay

Tomorrow is… National Junk Food Day. Mom carved out a unique niche in the food industry, in the early 1970s, when she dared to embrace the fast food and junk food fares that all the food critics and nutritionists of that time were warning the public against consuming.

Mom wore her “Junk Food Junkie” and “Fast Foods Freak” badges proudly. Incidentally, YouTube.com has a music video called “Junk Food Junkie”, by Larry Groce (1976). Mom really liked that song when it came out. Incidentally, Chiff.com offers great information and ideas for celebrating National Junk Food Day.

Mom grabbed the public’s attention by storm, creating recipes in her own kitchen, using ordinary pantry products with which to imitate our favorite “forbidden” foods. At home, she controlled the ingredients – taking the junk out of junk food.

Not only did she discover how to make these products at home, without the “added junk”, but she also found that she could make them, herself, for less money than buying them. She felt that if her imitations could save our family money then she needed to share them with others.

Mom started out, selling her copycat recipes collection printed on fileable, index cards for 25-cents each (or 5 for $1). The collection continually grew. Due to space constrictions, she decided to cap her catalog of choices at about 200 recipes. Thus, as she continued to develop and add new imitations, she took older or slower-selling recipes out of the collection.

In 1973, she self-published her very first cookbook, The Better Cooker’s Cookbook (Happy Newspaper Features, Algonac, MI). It went well but it wasn’t enough for her. Therefore, in 1974, Mom started self-publishing a monthly newsletter, featuring her “secret recipes” and food-for-thought columns; along with gardening tips, household hints, and bits of humor.

After a few initial tries at self-publishing cookbooks, she found that most of her readers wanted more copycat recipes for the “forbidden” fast foods and junk foods than the fancy restaurant dishes. Thus, in 1976, she began writing her first series of self-published, “secret recipes” cookbooks that focused more on fast foods and junk foods.

The first in the series was called The Secret Restaurant Recipes Book (aka: “Book 1”), released in 1976 but revised in 1977 and re-revised in 1978 to appease some companies who didn’t believe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Later that year, in July, having so much material with which to still work, Mom was quick to follow up with “Book 2” in her series, which she cleverly called The Second Helping of Secret Recipes. The hunger from her fans continued to grow for more of the fast foods’ and junk foods’ “copycat recipes”.

Over the following three years, Mom self-published three more hits – each one unique and fresh: Eating Out At Home (aka: “Book 3”), in 1978; Top Secret Recipes Al’a Carte (aka: “Book 4”), in 1979; and The Secrets Of Homemade Groceries (aka: “Book 5”), in 1980.

Between the five books, in this series alone, Mom had developed over 1,400 imitations; covering 59 diverse restaurants (from Arby’s to Yummyland), 83 brands of grocery products (from A&P to Wonder), signature dishes from 22 famous hotel chains and inns.

Also included in this collection are imitations for 15 favorite candies and carnival eats, numerous menu choices from 12 different department stores’ dining rooms and cafeterias, as well as renowned goodies from seven well-known tourist hot spots.

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

The Second Helping of Secret Recipes (National Homemakers Newsletter, Pearl Beach, MI; July 1977, p. 1-2)

DE-BUNKING THE JUNK

WHAT IS THE TRUTH about junk food? The food experts have been referring to many snack foods and fast foods as ‘junk’ in an attempt to disqualify their value when compared to foods containing high amounts of protein and vitamins.

No one has confirmed a definition of the expression “junk food”, yet the public has been conditioned to accept any snack food, sweets, candies, confections, baked goods and many beverages as “junk food” when, in reality, these are not without nutritional value.

All by itself, a raw carrot could hardly support the human system substantially; neither could a cup of yogurt. Yet, a candy bar or a small piece of cake or a hamburger on a bun is considered, by some of the food industry’s most prestigious experts, as having little or no food value in our daily diets.

The junk food paradox has caused school systems and other public institutions to ban the sale of any foods we would consider snack items, making it illegal, in fact, in the state of Michigan and some others, if such items were sold to children through vending machines on the premises.

This is infuriating to the good cooks and… food chemists among us, who know that JUNK FOOD is actually any food that is poorly prepared. ALL food has nutritional value. Some just seem to have more than others. But, in the final analysis, it is purely personal taste that will determine the popularity of one food over another.

The “fast food” industry has been the most successful of any phase in the business. Their success depending largely on the fact that their recipes are all closely guarded secrets! I say, “Bologna!”

As a very believing public, we have been spoon-fed a good deal of shrewd publicity by some very skilled… advertising people, who count on our susceptibility to commercial advertising campaigns to buy their products.

Whether we’re buying a hamburger in one of McDonald’s restaurants… or a Twinkie off of the grocer’s shelf, we still believe that these products can’t be equaled by any other company in the industry, nor by the average cook in a standard, home kitchen… AND this is wrong!

#NationalMerryGoRoundDay

With summer upon us, every weekend festivals and fairs are just about everywhere you look. It’s fair food season for incredible junk food indulgences. By the way, relatedly, Saturday is National Merry-Go-Round Day, too.

There’s a great article, at Parade.com (with 29 recipes), for how to “…Recreate the Best State Fair Food at Home…” – written by Megan Porta (August 25, 2021) – including “10 of the most popular state fair foods…”.

Deep Fried Oreos
Fried Chicken in a Waffle Cone
Deep Fried Snickers
Pizza Cone
Cannoli Dessert Nachos
Deep Fried PB&J
Corn in a Cup
Turkey Legs
Deep Fried Cheese Curds
Cookie Fries

Did you notice most of Megan’s choices are fried (or deep fried)? I’m surprised that “Elephant Ears” didn’t make her list, as well as other classics like caramel apples and cotton candy, which were always among my personal favorites – and Mom’s, too. She created a lot of copycat versions of many of our much loved fair foods.

Some of Megan’s “top 10” were featured on Noah Cappe’s hit show, Carnival Eats. I call it, “having fair food fever”, rather than being a “junk food junkie”. Whenever I go to a festival, carnival, or fair, it’s hard not to treat myself to at least one of those once-in-a-great-while “taboo treats”.

MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

The Second Helping Of Secret Recipes, Revised (National Home News, St. Clair, MI; Nov. 1978, 4^th Printing; p. 1)

DEAR JUNK FOOD JUNKIE, YOUR FIX HAS ARRIVED

BEING A HOPELESSLY INCURABLE junk food addict has its drawbacks in a world that today cries out for a better balanced diet.

When famous recording star, Larry Groce, first coined the title “Junk Food Junkie” in his best-selling album of the same name, those of us who had been hooked on hamburgers, Hostess Twinkies, haute cuisine of the other snack foods, could breathe a sigh of relief – somebody understood. But nobody seemed to be doing anything about it…

Of course, the cookbooks published weren’t doing anything to help us cure the chronic case of junk food addiction because they were feeling the pressures of the need for nutritional education, cancelling out the credibility of snack foods as having any value at all.

Well, my friends, only half of the story was being told and so I began the publication of recipes for fast food imitations you could prepare at home and enjoy as if you were eating out.

#GloriaPitzersCookbook

https://www.balboapress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001062253

AGAIN, MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES

Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 6)

[A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)]

IT ALL STARTED WITH…

I DO, WITH RECIPES, what Rich Little does with voices! Imitating the “Secret Recipes” of the food industry has been an exciting experience for me. The critics felt that “fast foods” and restaurant dishes were not worth the effort to duplicate at home, when you can just as easily buy the products already prepared!

The critics who contend that “fast foods” are “junk foods” and not good for us, have probably never prepared these foods themselves.

Certainly, they have no access to the closely guarded recipes from the food companies that created these dishes, as there are only a few people in each operation that are permitted the privilege of such information! So, 99% of the critics’ speculations are based on their own opinions.

To know what these dishes contained, they’d have to be better chemists than I, as I have tested over 20,000 recipes with only the finished product as my guide to determine what each contained. Fast foods are not junk foods unless they’re not properly prepared.

Any food that is poorly prepared (and just as badly presented) is junk! Unfortunately, fast food has carried a reputation, by default, of containing ingredients that are ‘harmful’ to us.

Yet, they contain the same ingredients as those foods served in the “finer” restaurants with wine stewards, linen tablecloths, candlelight, coat-check attendants, and parking valets; which separate the plastic palaces of fast food from the expensive dining establishments.

One “eats” at McDonald’s, but “dines” at The Four Seasons. Steak and potato or hamburger and French fries – the ingredients are practically the same. How they are prepared makes the difference!

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!

…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… 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’d want to imitate fast food at home?

I found that over a million people who saw me demonstrate replicating some famous fast food [and junk food] products [the FIRST time I was] 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 have investigated the recipes, dishes, and cooking techniques of ‘fine’ dining rooms around the world, I received more requests from people who wanted to know how to make things like McDonald’s Special Sauce or… White Castle’s hamburgers than I received for those things like Club 21’s Coq Au Vin.

#NationalBeSomeoneDay

So MANY copycats have copied the ORIGINAL copycat – I’d like to give a shout-out to PressReader.com, for printing a copy of Mom’s Twinkie imitation (one of our favorite junk foods) and properly giving her credit for it. Remember when Hostess claimed bankruptcy and there was a run on Twinkies? Mom didn’t worry. She knew how to make them, herself.

By the way, tomorrow is also National Be Someone Day – even if it’s a “junk food junkie”, a “fast foods freak”, or a copycat cook. Mom loved being all of them because she discovered you can remove the “junk” when you make a copycat version, yourself.

IN CLOSING…

In honor of TODAY, being National Lollipop Day, and tomorrow, being National Junk Food Day, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Lollipops”; as seen in her self-published cookbook, The Joy Of NOT Cooking – Any More Than You Have To (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Nov. 1983, p. 199). I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.

#NationalLollipopDay

#NationalJunkFoodDay