As always, thank God it’s Monday! I look forward to every Monday because they’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you.
I also look forward to National Bargain Hunting Week, which officially started yesterday but the “pre-party” trifecta to the celebration was on Saturday, the day before – being it was National Happiness Happens Day, National Dollar Day, and National Garage Sale Day.
Bargain hunting is a happy adventure one takes for the thrill of discovering a good deal. A few tips for finding the best deals include comparing various stores’ prices online, using coupons and frequent shopper cards or store apps, as well as going to second-hand thrift stores early in the week – Tuesdays and Wednesdays are often chosen for extra discounts.
[NOTE: Next Monday is, among other things, National Thrift Shop Day.]
Like Mom, I love bargains, as they save money on household expenses. That leaves more money for other things. Happiness happened for us whenever we saved money or got “more for our money”. I learned at a young age, from her, to look for the orange “clearance” signs for some really good bargains.
BRAND LOYALTY
Every August, when I was growing up, Mom would take us girls to the mall to buy new school clothes – at back-to-school bargain prices. Afterward, we’d have lunch in Hudson’s dining room so she could try to copycat another one of their famous menu offerings.
We each had a budgeted amount to spend. My sisters always liked the “name brand”, “seasonal” fashions that were trending more than bargains so their allowances didn’t go very far. However, I never cared for fads, nor what was “in season” or brand names. It was more important to me that they fit well and I was getting more clothes for my money.
It made my sisters angry that I got more new clothes than they did but Mom continually pointed out to them that we each got the same amount of money to spend. Bargains always save me money and saving money makes happiness happen, at least for me.
They (whoever “they” are) say, when you buy something cheap, “you get what you pay for.” However, I’ve personally learned that just because something costs more that doesn’t mean it’s better. Some brands are worth the money but not all of them. About the only things to which I am brand-loyal are Dawn dish soap and Duracell batteries. They’re worth it.
I think a good bargain is always worth the hunt because, these days, every dollar counts and every dollar matters; so much so that I think there has been a resurgence in “extreme couponing”, except a lot of it’s now done through store apps. Most stores offer coupons and/or frequent shopper discount cards to attract bargain-hunting, loyal customers.
Our new “old norm” is that “money doesn’t stretch as far as it used to”. But then, again, when has it ever? While Mom was writing her syndicated columns for various newspapers, back in the 1960s and 1970s, from time to time she would cover the subject of inflation; then, again, throughout the decades after, in her self-published newsletters and books.
COPYCAT COOKERY
The rising costs of food back then were, in part, what motivated her to develop her copycat cookery concept – that and a reader’s request for how to make McDonald’s “special sauce” at home. She often referred to her copycat cookery concept as “Eating Out At Home”, which was also the title of one of her early, self-published, cookbooks.
Another one of her creations from that first “Secret Recipes” series was The Secrets of Homemade Groceries (1980). If her homemade replications saved our household money, she wanted to share them with everyone. Critics didn’t believe that the copycat “fad”, which Mom started, would ever last long. But copycat cookery continues to run strong, still today.
Dollar stores and Aldi’s markets have become very popular “bargain stores”, in the last six years, for offering inexpensive products; especially after prices started surging in 2020, due to “supply chain problems” – but prices continued to rise every month and every year since. There’s always another excuse, as to why.
[NOTE: Mom’s last cookbook (published by Balboa Press) is still available at the same great price!]
“THIS COOKBOOK IS NOT a ‘bargain basement’ collection! It’s not a mish-mosh of recipes from here and there. It’s not at all like any other cookbook you will probably find unless the publisher has used mine as a pattern… and a few have. But it’s nice to know – in having sold several hundred thousand copies of my monthly publication and my other 5 books [as of 1982], as well as the… books I did prior to [the] ‘Secret Recipes’ [series] – that my readers have also been my friends.”
“I make a living with my writing – but it’s my writing that makes living worthwhile!”
“Best wishes for great cooking adventures!”
[By Gloria Pitzer, as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 7) – a revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3rd Edition).]
BARGAIN BASEMENT
Did you know that the term “bargain basement” used to refer to a literal basement in a downtown Chicago department store? It originated before 1910 at the Marshall Field’s store, where they began selling a mish-mosh or hodgepodge of discounted stock, at very low prices in a very low location – their basement level.
Marshall’s “basement bargains” were so popular, especially during times of recession and the “Great Depression” era, that other retailers quickly followed suit – even if they didn’t have a basement, they would still designate a special area of their sales floor for their “clearance” or “bargain” items.
To me, a bargain feels like a “smart win” – getting a high-value item for a low price. Sometimes bargains refer to things that are good deals – being sold at a very low price just because of a flaw, damaged packaging, being discontinued, or it’s “out of season”.
Bargains can also come as a result of overstock conditions, customer returns, going-out-of-business situations, or the like. Nowadays, “bargain bins” are the new trend – large boxes or containers of a variety of things like old stock, discontinued products, good things with damaged packaging, or items with imperfections – being sold for “pennies-on-the-dollar”.
“Food For Thought”, a syndicated column by Gloria Pitzer (circa 1970s)
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SUGAR?
BACK IN THE GOOD old days of hearth-minding and homemaking, about all a woman had to be concerned with was disguising her leftovers. Today, we have Hamburger Helper – and what luck! It no longer has anything to help.
Look what’s happened to sugar, for instance. Somebody figured out recently that there has been an 80% increase in the price of sugar in the last 12 months.
What I still can’t understand, though, is how sugar can be so expensive, and be boycotted by so many homemakers, who are learning to do without; and we still have 100% attendance, plus, a membership waiting list, at my weekly Weight Watchers© meeting.
You know what’s wrong with this country? We’re putting Platformate in our gasoline to make it go further – when it’s our money that needs it. That’s like adding love to dog food when it’s marriage that needs it.
The new cars are coming out soon and they say these will be going up in price, too. If things get any worse, when you ask to have a foreign economy model, about all you’ll be able to afford is a rickshaw.
I had this ridiculous dream the other night that went much like an editorial cartoon in the newspaper. I saw this large, strong hand come out of nowhere, labeled “Public Resistance”. It grabbed the arm of the supermarket dock clerk, who was just about to erase a price on a bag of sugar and stamp on a higher price.
Wouldn’t things be wonderful if it worked that way? If King George had done to sugar what he did to tea, 200 years ago, our forefathers would’ve had to rename Boston Harbor “Sugar Bay”!
Perhaps we’ve been so busy, being angry about what is going on in the stock market, we haven’t had the time nor energy to get angry enough to do something about what’s going on in our supermarket.
It isn’t sugar – or cars, or gasoline, or any other of the other commodities we object to being more expensive. Sugar is only a representation of public passive resistance to almost everything that requires individual attention and involvement.
Making money isn’t the real problem these days – it’s saving it that gives us all the trouble. The “whatever-the-traffic-will-bare” theory has become the rule when it used to be the exception. Sugar isn’t the only problem.
Somebody figured out the other day why the price of bread has gone up, too. Remember when they said, “man cannot live by bread alone”? He can today IF he can get financing!
Somebody reminded us recently that the bumper wheat crop we had not long ago should have kept the price of bread down. Do you know where we buy most of our wheat? Canada! Do you know where they get it? From Russia! And where did Russia get it? From us!
YARD SALES
Second-hand stores and garage/yard sales are also excellent sources for frugal shopping. This past weekend was the annual M-29/M-25 Yard Sales & Antiques Trail around the “Thumb Coast” of Michigan. It’s a beautiful drive – with bargains galore. I look forward to this event every year.
Some years, I spend a day shopping part of the trail. Other years, I host my own yard sale during the event, as I am less than a mile from M-29, where it runs through St. Clair. This year, I was getting ready to host a sale but the weather turned rainy so I couldn’t do it. I really wish I had a garage then, rain or shine, I could open my sale any weekend.
MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
“No Laughing Matter”, by Gloria Pitzer (circa 1970s-1980s)
[HOW TO] HAVE A GARAGE SALE IN ONE EASY BREAKDOWN
UNTIL YOU’VE HAD A garage sale, you just don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve just had one and I know! I’m missing three garbage cans, my husband’s workbench, a swing set, four lawn chairs and our station wagon. Actually, those items weren’t for sale, but you can’t refuse a good price when it’s offered to you.
All I really wanted to sell was a few odds-and-ends like 7 dozen Ruby Bee Jelly glasses, a coke bottle mosaic of my mother-in-law, a transistor radio guaranteed to crack plaster when operated by a teenager, an illustrated guide book to Disneyland and my husband’s bowling ball.
Of course, if the truth were known, I just had to do something about the closets before we were cited for contempt by the Pollution Control Commission. The kids were cleaning out their rooms and dragging out microscopes that had only examined curdled milk.
There was an electric train with which only their father had played, a guitar that never played a tune (but made a neat tennis racket), socks that scratched and even their old report cards. But I drew the line when it came to selling their toothbrushes and underwear. I mean, a person has to be reasonable about these things!
I had heard that garage sales were successful, but I didn’t believe it until I saw 23 cars double-parked in our drainage ditch, a pick-up truck on the back porch and a dune buggy in the furnace room! It takes a garage sale to prove that a woman will buy anything, if she thinks it’s on sale.
Afterall, what can one do with a dead philodendron plant – a plastic one, yet? I also learned that there’s no exercise so efficacious for the upper arms as standing in the midst of a group of mad women and trying to keep them from taking the rafters apart while trying to get at our storm windows (which I’ll have you know were NOT for sale); but little did they care.
One woman offered me a dollar for the dress I was wearing, and I had to run half a block to catch up with the lady who gave my son 50 cents for the sheets on the clothes lines. Did she care it was my laundry and I had to make the beds before the day was over – and where would I be without those sheets?
I finally had to administer first aid to the two girls who fought so bitterly over which of them was going to drag off to their car a plaid CPO jacket and a pair of blue worsted men’s slacks! Mind you. I wouldn’t have cared under any other circumstances, but my husband was still in them AND he didn’t want to go with either of them.
He wanted to stay home and watch the ball game on TV! By 6pm, they had bought everything that wasn’t breathing, barking or encased in concrete. As I sat at the kitchen table, counting up the profits of the day, my husband came staggering in, bruised and breathless.
“You know that guy with the flat-bed truck, who’s been hanging around all day?” [He asked.] “Well, he just gave me $50 and drove off with our garage!”
It all goes to prove, if I had put a price on those kids of ours, I might have sold them – but who could afford to feed them once they got them home?
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 therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective. I look forward to hearing from you!
IN CLOSING…
In honor of TODAY, being National S’mores Day, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Graham Crackers – Homemade”; as seen in her self-published cookbook, The Great Imitator’s Cookbook (Secret RecipesTM, Marysville, MI; October 1999, p. 20). 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 August observes… Family Fun Month, Happiness Happens Month, International Peace Month, National Brownies at Brunch Month, National Catfish Month, National Goat Cheese Month, National Panini Month, National Sandwich Month, and more.
Today is also… National Connecticut Day.
Tomorrow is… National Raspberry Bombe Day. Plus, it’s the last day of The Dog Days of Summer.
Wednesday, August 12th, is… National Julienne Fries Day.
Thursday, August 13th, is… National Prosecco Day and National Filet Mignon Day.
Friday, August 14th, is… National Creamsicle Day.
August 15th is… National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. Plus, as the third Saturday in August (for 2026), it’s also… World Honey Bee Day.
Sunday, August 16th, is… National Rum Day.
Have a great week!
…32 down and 20 to go.
