Thank God it’s Monday, again. I LOVE Mondays because they’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, I hope this brings you a happy Monday.
THE SECRET RECIPES DETECTIVE
#NationalWomensSmallBusinessMonth, #NationalWorkAndFamilyMonth, #PositiveAttitudeMonth, #SelfPromotionMonth, #NationalCookbookMonth, #NationalBookMonth, #NationalBusinessWomensWeek
October has a lot of observances that inspire me to celebrate my mom, Gloria Pitzer – the ORIGINAL copycat cook, also known as the “Secret Recipes Detective” – a nickname given to her in the early 1970s, by her fast-growing fan base in the Detroit area, as they listened to her regularly on radio interviews, where she first promoted her copycat cookery concept.
She could taste anything and figure out how to duplicate it from pantry products she had at home – as well as at a savings – instead of purchasing it. If it saved our family money, Mom wanted to share it with everyone. She never was very good at keeping such secrets.
Fittingly, for Mom, among many other things, October is… National Cookbook Month, National Book Month, National Women’s Small Business Month, National Work and Family Month, Positive Attitude Month, and Self-Promotion Month. Next week is National Business Women’s Week.
SMALL BUSINESS, POSITIVE ATTITUDE & SELF-PROMOTION
In the early 1970s, Mom quit her job at the local newspaper, writing a food column and what she called “humdrum” recipes, after discovering a much needed niche in the food industry – one that the newspaper’s food industry advertisers wanted stifled – how to imitate famous foods and dishes from famous places to famous brands.
However, Mom couldn’t be stifled. Thus, she started her own small business, though she called it a family business, creating copycat recipes for imitating famous foods from famous places. Nobody else in the recipe business had ever done such a thing before and she found that people were hungry for it.
THE COPYCAT CONCEPT
My mom really never knew what was actually in the food industry’s so-called secret recipes – unless they shared their secrets with her and a few did. As I said previously, she had a unique talent for tasting something, picking out its unique flavors, and developing her own version but she could also create duplications from descriptions that people gave her.
Her copycat concept caught on quickly, despite the critics and skeptics predicting that the public’s interest in her kind of cookery wouldn’t last for long. It not only continued for many decades because it had merit but it also started a movement of copycat cooks – some actually plagiarized her recipes (word-for-word) to sell as their own. A subject for another time.
Mom started her mail-order recipe business with individual recipe cards that she sold for a quarter each or five for a dollar. Her collection of recipes grew quickly. Mostly due to limited space, she decided to cap the total number of individual recipes available at about 200. As new ones developed, old or poor-selling ones were pulled.
FROM RECIPE CARDS TO COOKBOOKS
#NationalCookbookMonth, #NationalBookMonth
Sometimes, with the most popular dozen or so recipes, she’d create a sheet of free sample recipes, including ordering information for more, as well as for her current cookbook(s) and monthly newsletter. All anyone had to do was mail her a self-addressed-stamped envelope and she’d mail the envelope back with her free recipes and ordering information.
By the way, it was 54 years ago, in the fall of 1972, when Mom started putting together her first self-published and self-promoted cookbook, The Better Cooker’s Cookbook, which she began selling in early 1973.
The following year is when she designed a monthly newsletter to showcase her new duplication discoveries. It started with the January 1974 issue – the first of hundreds of issues to come until the newsletter was retired 27 years later, with the December 2000 issue being the last one. Over the decades she continuously reinvented and revised her business.
She also decided to retire the individual recipe cards in the mid-1970s after she started writing her first series of fast-food cookbooks. There were five books in the first series, with a new one coming out every year. Mom continued writing and revising cookbooks, at the same rate, for about 40 years.
In the early 1980s, when Dad found out he was diabetic, Mom re-developed many of her copycat recipes into sugar free versions. She also developed shortcut versions of her recipes, using only four or five ingredients instead of eight to ten.
Mom discovered many shortcuts, such as using mayonnaise instead of eggs and oil; or using a single box of cake mix as a substitution for a combination of five dry ingredients – flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Even though Mom started it all by herself, from our dining room table – writing it, designing it, and promoting it – to her, it was always a “family enterprise”. We all pitched in to assist her, wherever our ages and capabilities could help out.
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. 41-43)
EVERY DAY IS A NEW DAY!
[RE: LOAVES & FISHES]
WE ALWAYS LOOK for a turning point in our lives when things have not gone smoothly. I’m beginning to believe that every day is a turning point – that each experience contributes to our eventual goals and growth. I caution my newsletter readers, even today, not to think in terms of “forever”.
Think of now and forever will take care of itself. Most of us worry too much about what my mother calls “loaves and fishes”. “We worry too much”, Mom insists, and rightly so, “about having something to live ON – and too little about having something to live FOR!”
It is not so much where we have been or where we are going but where we are NOW that matters. I look back only to find comfort in those never-again moments during which our five children were growing up and our family enterprise was just getting started.
I can only remember how Paul looked when I told him I had bought my own mimeograph machine and how I was using it. BOOM! The mimeograph did give me the advantage of being self-sufficient without having to go into debt.
HOW IT BEGAN 1973 – 1974
HOW TO SELL IT – CRITICAL EARLY ADVANTAGE
PAUL FAILED TO SEE the importance of my having to have this, until I showed him the receipt for it having been paid-in-full, and the bankbook that showed him exactly how much I had earned from having printed a newspaper column on the machine, then selling them to 11 newspapers around the state.
John McPartlin had loaned me his newspaper directory, from which I drew the names and addresses of those weekly papers that had a circulation sufficient to afford a dollar per column, per week. Considering the mimeograph only cost $79.95, I feel I did pretty well, skimping and scraping to get it paid for.
Paul was skeptical, however, that it would ever be anything [other] than an expensive hobby. I think I must have tried so very hard to be the best I could be, to prove to him that he was wrong about me.
THE NEWSLETTER
THE NEWSLETTER BEGAN with the [January 1974 issue, printed on the] mimeograph in our utility room where I cut the stencils [for] the drum by hand, applied the stencils, and ran the copies off a few hundred at a time, allowing them to air-dry on the dining room table in the next room.
The dining room table was a door to which Paul had affixed four table legs. It was seldom clear of our work. I never gave any thought [back] then, either, to the number of hours that we put into producing the newsletter. We simply worked until the work was finished, or we found a good “breaking-off” point.
MARKETING INSPIRATION
TO MAKE THE MIMEOGRAPH pay for itself, I even printed up my own business cards on it, using dime-store construction paper and then cutting the cards apart with scissors until I had neat little stacks of about 50 and a total of two or 300 cards. These I distributed at the mall whenever and wherever we might be in one.
Paul did not know I was doing this, at first, either, or he would’ve disapproved. It was unprofessional and risky, but I thought anything was worth a try and what I could do “quietly” until I could prove it was either a mistake or a benefit, would have to be my little secret.
Well, actually, the kids were a part of that secret too. I had heard an interview on TV or radio with “the world’s most successful salesman”, who was a Chevrolet salesman in Detroit and who believed heartily in business cards, placing them everywhere and anywhere that it was allowed.
From his story, I found it was easy to drop my card into the pocket of a bathrobe in the ladies’ wear [areas] in the department stores and in the purses and tote bags, on public phone booth stands, [in] restaurant restrooms, even in cookbooks in the bookstores.
From these, you’d be surprised, we DID hear from people who wanted to know about my recipes, which was the first experience I had with public response. What I had at that time was a little book entitled “The Better Cookers Cookbook” [1973], as opposed to our current popular book, “Better Cookery”. [1983 – the one I rewrote for Mom.]
The distribution of information on the book included my mailing a copy of it along with a letter explaining how and why it was written to several of my favorite newspaper columnists and friends.
One with whom I had contacted on various subjects before, was Bob Talbert of the “Detroit Free Press”. He mentioned this little book in one of his columns, as [being] “for a buck-and-a-half-and-a-belly-laugh”. It worked!
WORK AND FAMILY
Mom mentions in an excerpt from her memories (above): “The dining room table was a door to which [Dad] had affixed four table legs. It was seldom clear of our work.” I have that old closet door, dining room table, as well as our old kitchen table from the same time. They both bring me so many happy family memories all year long but especially in the fall.
As I wrote last week:
This time of year brings… a sense of heartfelt nostalgia – that deep longing for the past, characterized by warm affection and a gentle sense of loss for days gone by and people no longer with us… October is often a period of reflection… Peaceful, happy thoughts and memories are usually brought to mind, particularly during the fall…
I remember when Mom took me and my sisters to the mall to help her distribute her business cards, as she depicted above. I also recall when we were all sitting around that dining room table she described, coloring in parts of the covers of her first cookbook with colored pencils. It was vital to stay in the lines and make them look good.
There are so many wonderful memories of my mom that I want to keep alive with this blog series, Mondays And Memories Of My Mom. She left behind a big legacy of love in everything she wrote for all of us to continue reading for generations to come. I love hearing from people who remember her in their own special ways, too.
LAST THOUGHTS…
#Brassheart, #MichiganOverFifty
“Friends are a treasure and when we count our blessings we count our friends twice! It’s not possible to have a full and happy life without others to share with, to help when help is needed, to be helped when help is offered.” – Gloria Pitzer, My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 100)
I have such a friend, myself. Rock Allen is as kindhearted as they come. He recently built a beautiful website, Brassheart.Studio. It has a “spin-off”, MichiganOverFifty.com, where Michiganders over 50 can gather. There are great Michigan based stories, one of which he wrote about me and Mom; plus, games, events and much more. Check it out!
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 Wednesday, being National Dessert Day; plus, it’s National Dessert Month, as well as National Book Month, National Cookbook Month and National Bake and Decorate Month; and, additionally, since Friday is Department Store Day…
Below is Mom’s copycat recipe for “Chiffon Cream Cheese Cake, Bundt (Style) – Like Hudson’s”, which uses her “Cinnamon And Sugar Mix” recipe. Both recipes are from her last cookbook… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018), as seen on pages 203 & 167, respectively.
[NOTE: This cookbook is 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 these recipes.
#NationalDessertDay, #NationalDessertMonth, #NationalBakeAndDecorateMonth, #DepartmentStoreDay
#NationalBookMonth, #NationalCookbookMonth, #GloriaPitzersCookbook
P.S. Food-for-thought until next Monday…
#LearnSomethingNewEveryDay, #NationalDayCalendar
October also celebrates… Eat Better & Eat Together Month, German-American Heritage Month, Halloween Safety Month, Italian-American Heritage Month, National Apple Month, National Applejack Month, National Caramel Month, National Chili Month, National Cookie Month, National Pasta Month, National Pickled Peppers Month, National Pizza Month, National Popcorn Poppin’ Month, National Pork Month, National Pretzel Month, National Sausage Month, National Seafood Month, Pear and Pineapple Month, Polish-American Heritage Month, Rhubarb Month, Spinach Lovers Month, Tackling Hunger Month, Vegetarian Month, and more.
Today is also… National Vermont Day, National Farmer’s Day, and National Gumbo Day. Plus, as the second Monday in October (for 2026), it’s also… Native American Day and Columbus Day AND the start of… National School Lunch Week.
Tomorrow is… National Yorkshire Pudding Day.
October 14th, being the second Wednesday in October (for 2026), is… National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day and National Stop Bullying Day.
October 15th is… National Shawarma Day and National Cheese Curd Day. Additionally, as the third Thursday of the fourth quarter (for 2026), it’s also… Get to Know Your Customers Day, which is on the third Thursday of every quarter in the year (January, April, July, and October).
Friday, October 16th, is… National Liqueur Day and National Dictionary Day. Plus, for 2026, it’s also… Boss’s Day.
October 17th is… National Pasta Day. Plus, as the third Saturday in October (for 2026), it’s also… National Sweetest Day.
Sunday, October 18th, is… National Chocolate Cupcake Day. Plus, as the start of the third week in October (for 2026), it’s also the start of… National Kraut Sandwich Week.
Have a great week!
…41 down and 11 to go.
