twinkieday Archives - Secret Recipes

April 3, 2023

Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Comebacks

Thank God Its Monday, once again, and happy April! I personally 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;. So #HappyMonday to one and all!

#TheRecipeDetective

This Wednesday is the 30^th anniversary of Mom’s SECOND appearance on the Phil Donahue show (in 1993)! I wrote about Mom’s experiences with the Donahue Show appearances a few years ago, in my blog post, Fortunate. That episode broke records!

Let me back-track a bit. The year, following Mom’s FIRST appearance on the Donahue Show, in July 1981, was probably the most chaotic time in the 40-year history of her family-run, dining room table, cottage-style operation. We didn’t expect, nor were we set up for over a million letters in response, requesting the free recipes offered on the show.

Secret Recipes^TM was just A FAMILY AFFAIR! Other than one full-time Administrative Assistant, it was just my parents, taking care of the day-to-day operations of their self-publishing, mail-order, recipes business, with a little help, now and then, from me and my sisters, after school.

For months, following Mom’s 1981 appearance, the Donahue show re-aired that episode around the country and around the world and we received over a million letters; necessitating the need to bring in some extra help, including some of my high school friends, to assist with all of the extra mailings we had to prepare and send out.

We mailed out hundreds of thousands of Mom’s “free recipes and product-ordering information” sheets, in exchange for all the self-addressed stamped envelopes that poured in, per the offer they had announced on the Donahue show. We were also mailing out thousands more newsletter issues, from all of the new subscriptions that followed.

As chaotic as it was, in the end, Mom recognized that the Donahue Show opened a lot of doors for her that might never have happened, otherwise. It brought her unique style of “copycat cookery” to the attention of MILLIONS of new eyes, fairly quickly (as it was before household internet) worldwide. She felt very fortunate and grateful.

#StressAwarenessMonth

There’s no denying that Mom pioneered a ‘movement’, carving out a new niche in the food industry – “copycat cookery”. There was nothing else like it, at that time. Critics said the “fad” wouldn’t last long. But Mom inspired a crusade of “copycats”. Unfortunately, some went as far as copying Mom’s work, to the point of plagiarism, prompting legal battles.

The pressure of everything was straining Mom and Dad and tearing our family apart. [NOTE: April is National Stress Awareness Month!] Mom swore she’d never do another national TV show. However, she was talked into doing several more, over the years, including Donahue, AGAIN!

I LOOK BACK NOW… and realize how FORTUNATE I was to have had my life touched by so many helpful people – so many famous people! It’s almost incredible that what started out to be merely the frosting on the cake, of my monthly newsletter, soon became the whole cake! – Gloria Pitzer, Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 86)

When the producer of the Donahue Show called Mom, after 12 years, asking her to come back, in April 1993, Mom hesitantly agreed but only on the condition that they not give out any contact information for Secret Recipes^TM or our family. That stipulation inadvertently resulted in a record-breaking event for the show!

The “Recipe Detective” episode had the most requested transcript, of all time, shattering the last record into tiny bits! The Donahue Show sent Mom a congratulatory letter and plaque to commemorate the historic event. Unfortunately, the show ended it’s 29-year stretch (1967-1996) a few years later, re-running the 1993 episode of Mom that year, too.

There are “grainy” recordings of the 1993, hour-long episode on YouTube, in a series of 5 segments. I wish I knew where I could find a recording or transcript from Mom’s July 7^th, 1981, appearance. If anyone reading this knows, PLEASE, send me an email at: [email protected] – and thank you, in advance!

#TwinkieDay

Among the many recipe demonstrations that Mom did on the Donahue Show, was her “Hopeless Twinkles_©” version of James Dewar’s invention. By the way, Thursday is National Hostess Twinkie Day. See Mom’s copycat recipe for these, on the “Recipes” tab.

Did you know… Mom was the FIRST person (circa 1975) to develop a make-at-home version for imitating the cream-filled, golden-sponge-cake delight at home? Thus, I was surprised to find, when I searched for “twinkie recipes” on Google, Mom’s imitation wasn’t even listed in the first two pages of “About 1,520,000 results…”!

So MANY copycats have copied the ORIGINAL copycat – yet so FEW have given her the proper credit she deserves, for being the inventor of copycat cookery. On that note, I also searched for “Pitzer Twinkie recipe”. Mom’s recipe, from this website, which I first shared in a 2019 blog post, was the THIRD one listed, out of “About 161,000 results…”).

I was pleased to see many of the others listed in that search properly accredited Mom’s original Hopeless Twinkles_© recipe. Additionally, I’d like to give a shout-out to PressReader.com, for printing a copy of one of Mom’s Twinkie imitations and also giving her proper credit! In my searches, I stumbled upon the following excerpt (pictured below), at Food.com…

#LearnSomethingNewEveryDay

Did you know… on August 19^th, 1919… William B. Ward registered the trademark name, Hostess, for his family’s company’s breads and cakes division? Additionally, it was James Dewar, while working for the Ward family at the Continental Baking Company, who invented the original Twinkie_®.

Originally, when the baking company was founded in the early 1900s, it was called Ward Baking Company. Soon after, it was known as the Continental Baking Company. Then it was purchased by Interstate Bakeries Corporation and renamed Hostess Brands.

For a more in-depth history of the Ward family, their baking company, Dewar’s Twinkies® and the drama that surrounded all of them, check out a fascinating article (as written by Bloomberg News), on FinancialPost.com, about the Twinkie history, spiced with murder & scandal! I’ve included, below, the short story that Mom wrote about Dewar decades ago.

A little over 10 years ago (in November 2012), there was a big run on Twinkies_®. Hostess Brands Company had announced it was going out of business and utter madness ensued, as Americans swarmed the stores and internet to buy every Twinkie_® they could find!

Some were being auctioned on eBay for THOUSANDS of dollars – and people were paying it! Our Canadian neighbors still had Hostess Brands in their country. They were laughing at us and joking about the lengths to which Americans would go, to get their hands on the suddenly-hard-to-find, coveted Twinkies_®.

A spokesperson for Hostess Brands sarcastically asked the media where all of those Hostess enthusiasts were BEFORE they had to file for bankruptcy.

TO DEBUNK THE JUNK…don’t think of Hostess Twinkies as ‘junk’ dessert but, rather, the very same cake ingredients prepared in the Waldorf Astoria kitchens as the basis for their ‘Flaming Cherries Supreme’. All we did [to imitate the product] was shape the cake differently, adding a little body to the filling and putting it INSIDE the cake, rather than on top, as the Waldorf did! – Gloria Pitzer, Eating Out at Home (National Home News, St. Clair, MI; Sep. 1978, p. 3)

LAST THOUGHTS…

#NationalFindARainbowDay

#NationalMonthOfHope

Today’s also National Find a Rainbow Day. Likewise, it’s the National Month of Hope! A quote on NationalDayCalendar.com, claims rainbows are considered symbols of beauty, as well as signs of hope and promise. When April showers come and the sun’s rays are opposite them, in the sky, look for the beautiful “arc of many colors”, created by Mother Nature.

Scientifically, they’re simply made from a combination of elements – like the sun being opposite the rain, in the sky, and “reflections and refractions of light” in the droplets of water. This can also be imitated in your backyard, on a sunny day, with a garden hose, spraying water. Try it!

AGAIN, MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

This is not a Cook Book! It’s Gloria Pitzer’s Food for Thought (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Oct. 1986, p. 34)

WHEN YOU HEAL THE HURT

IT HAS BEEN SAID that ‘when God closes a door, He opens a window’ – for those who have the wit to discover it. Among the ill, the handicapped, the disfigured… are an astonishing number of people who have found their ‘windows’. In quiet resurrections, they have risen out of their pain and despair and shattered hopes to new ambitions, new satisfactions and new happiness.

Though largely unsung, these men and women have in them the stuff of heroes! Their battles of necessity are fought alone… in endless hours and days and months. But, in these battles, they somehow develop a special kind of courage and, sooner or later, the breakthrough comes. Then, in spite of all the odds against them, they dare to say: ‘I may not have much candle left but, with what I have, I’ll shed a light.’

So, if you can’t be a lighthouse – be a candle! Let your light shine so that those on whom it may fall, will be blessed; and, like a springboard, bounce right back to make you feel good about it…

This made me think – besides being a light, “BE A RAINBOW” to someone! Shine beauty on them, giving hope and a promise for betterment of whatever may need it.

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

IN CLOSING…

In honor of TODAY, being World Party Day, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Prince Charles’ Skillet Strata”; as seen in… Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 135). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)].

#WorldPartyDay

#GloriaPitzersCookbook

Having an incurable curiosity, it follows that I should find the study of nutrition and the importance certain foods have in our diet, a very interesting endeavor, of which I have never tried. THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW TO LEARN, some new information, interesting discoveries to make cooking a positive pursuit. – Gloria Pitzer [Gloria Pitzer’s Mixed Blessings – Recipes & Remedies (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; March 1984), p. 15)]

P.S. Food-for-thought until we meet again, next Monday…

#LearnSomethingNewEveryDay

April observes, among other things… Keep America Beautiful Month, Lawn and Garden Month, National Couple Appreciation Month, National Decorating 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, and National Scottish-American Heritage Month!

The first full week of April is… National Public Health Week! [April 2^nd-8^th (for 2023)]

[NOTE: Lent began on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22^nd (2023), and runs through Thursday, April 6^th; with Easter Sunday, following on April 9^th (2023).]

April 3^rd-7^th (2023) is also… National Wildlife Week! [The national DAY observance is Sep. 3^rd (for 2023).]

Today is also… National Chocolate Mousse Day!

Tomorrow is… National Chicken Cordon Bleu Day, National Hug a Newsperson Day, National School Librarian Day, and National Vitamin C Day!

April 5^th is… Gold Star Spouses Day, National Caramel Day, National Deep Dish Pizza Day, National Nebraska Day, National Raisin and Spice Bar Day, National Read a Road Map Day! Plus, as the first Wednesday in April (for 2023), it’s also… National Walking Day!

April 6^th is… National Caramel Popcorn Day, New Beer’s Eve, and National Teflon Day! Plus, as the first Thursday in April (for 2023), it’s also… National Burrito Day!

Friday, April 7^th is… National Beer Day, National Coffee Cake Day, National No Housework Day, and Good Friday (for 2023)!

Saturday, April 8^th is… National All is Ours Day and National Zoo Lovers Day!

Sunday, April 9^th is… National Cherish an Antique Day, National Chinese Almond Cookie Day, and Easter Sunday (for 2023)!

#TGIM

https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-thank-god-its-monday-day-first-monday-in-january/

…14 down and 38 to go!

April 4, 2022

Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Turning Points

Happy Monday and happy April! I love Mondays, as they’re my 52 Chances each year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with all of you!

#TheRecipeDetective

Every day is a new day – a turning point, a gift, an opportunity! Each one has something to celebrate! Celebrating develops gratitude, which creates “turning points” for attitudes. Likewise, it generates a greater enjoyment of what we already have. As Ava Freeman wrote in one of her beautiful paintings (circa 1980s), ‘Every new day offers many gifts… Untie the ribbons!’

Did you know that today is, among other things, National Hug a Newsperson Day? Mom worked as a newsperson and syndicated columnist for years before developing her recipe business. Every day was a turning-point-opportunity to Mom. I wish I could hug her! Her newspaper days were among the many turning points in her life that lead to her becoming The Recipe Detective^TM.

Long before that, when Mom was 10, she saw the 1946 movie, Devotion (about the lives of the Bronte sisters), which created her own personal devotion to daily journaling. That was the first turning point for Mom, in becoming a writer. As a teenager and young adult, every story she wrote, for the various contests she entered and won, usually had something to do with food. Mom accredited these to being turning points in her journey as a writer.

Another major turning point came in the early 1970s, when Mom left her job (as a columnist at a local newspaper), to go home and start her own business with her groundbreaking concept of copycat cookery. That, in itself, was also a major turning point in the food industry!

All the media exposure Mom received from newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV talk shows, were more turning points in her growth and notoriety as The Recipe Detective^TM. The most influential of all was probably The Phil Donahue Show, on which she appeared twice! Each time, the episodes were re-run around the world, with an over-whelming response!

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, pp. 299-300). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition).]

THE PHIL DONAHUE SHOW…

SURPRISE – A DREAM COME TRUE!

If you’ve ever seen 1 million letters, you know how we felt when we tried to handle the overwhelming response [from our July 7, 1981, appearance on The Phil Donahue Show, in Chicago]! It was exhausting!

Our home, which was both our office and our sanctuary, became like a factory, with people helping us to process the mail, eventually having to return thousands of the orders to the customers with our deepest regrets that we could not, in all fairness to them, delay their order.

The onslaught of mail had forced us to do this. We were all working from 7 AM until 1 or 2 AM the next morning just to open and read the mail. Our phone bill had been buried in some of that mail and in a month’s time, being something like 23 to 24 days behind in opening the mail, our phone was shut off for non-payment of our bill.

As soon as we realized what the mail was doing to us, we tried to get Donahue’s people to stop the continued scheduled showings of our appearance. But that show remained on their repeat schedule for almost a year, playing in the Panama Canal zone, Greenland, Iceland, Australia and on hundreds of small town stations.

Most of the letters requested a sheet of ‘free’ recipes that were included with the order blank for a self-addressed stamped envelope to us. The offer would have been good for us, if it had only been shown that one time – the day on which we appeared on the show – but for nearly a year afterward, the requests still came, as did the complaints and the threats to report us to postal authorities for not having sent those ‘free’ recipes, tore us apart emotionally and physically!

Some people did not include their self-addressed-stamped envelope. Some envelopes were addressed to themselves, such as Joe Smith, but in care of OUR address instead of THEIR address. It was a confusing mess! Some people wrote threatening letters that they hadn’t received their orders and were turning us over to the postmaster general as frauds!

I laid my head on my desk many a time, in tears of anguish and fatigue. The family was falling apart. We couldn’t print our books fast enough, to fill all the orders! Then the post office, in delivering the thousands of books that we DID mail out, lost some, destroyed some, and delayed and even mis-directed other orders.

I remembered what Dick Syatt, one of our radio friends, had told me about finally getting everything you ever wanted, when he said, ‘Hell is God, giving you what you thought you wanted.’ Sometimes we need to have something, lose it and get it back again before we can really appreciate what we have. I had that chance, and I am so glad for it. It was [a turning point] a time to learn and to grow.

Mom claimed that one important “turning point” in her recipe work was the influence she got from Col. Sanders, himself, during one of her radio show visits on a Dallas station. His suggestion of finding one supermarket product for his “secret herbs and spices” made her fried chicken recipe more like the one he originally developed.

Mom shared her famous imitations (as she developed more than one version) of his chicken, during each of her appearances on The Phil Donahue Show. She humorously insisted that (with either version) the Colonel would’ve been a General if he had used her recipes!

Other imitations she shared in her ‘Donahue’ appearances included her Recess Peanut Butter Cups, Gloreo Cookies, Hopeless Twinkles, Hopeless Filled Cupcakes, Quacker Jack, White Tassel Hamburgers, Big Match Sauce, Wednesday’s Chili, and Wednesday’s Frosty Drink. [See the “Recipes” tab for these.]

At one time or another, these were all on Mom’s “free sheet” – a dozen or so copycat recipes that she gave away in exchange for self-addressed-stamped-envelopes, including ordering information for her newsletters and the cookbooks she had in print.

Friday is the 29^th anniversary of Mom’s SECOND appearance on The Phil Donahue Show (1993), which SMASHED national records for transcript requests – since Mom and Dad insisted that the show NOT give out any of their contact information; creating another turning point, not only for Secret Recipes^TM, but also for Journal Graphics and The Phil Donahue Show!

Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Twinkie Day Eve

Happy April and happy Easter Monday! Additionally, I wish a very merry Twinkie Day Eve to all! Mondays are so incredibly special! I continually look forward to them, as they are my 52 Chances, each year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with all of you!

#TheRecipeDetective

#TwinkieDay

Tomorrow, April 6^th, is National Hostess Twinkie Day! That makes today Twinkie Day Eve – whoop, whoop! This is a perfect time for me to write about how my mom was the FIRST person (circa 1975) to develop a make-at-home version for imitating the cream-filled, golden-sponge-cake delight at home!

When I searched for “Twinkie recipe” on Google, I got back “about 657,000 results…” and Mom wasn’t even in the first two pages of results! So MANY copycats have copied the ORIGINAL copycat – and yet so FEW have actually given my mom the proper credit she deserves for being the inventor of imitating junk foods, fast foods, and other restaurant favorites at home. Mom was the trail-blazing pioneer, who carved out the “copycat cookery” niche in the food industry over 48 years ago!

However, I must note that when I searched for “Pitzer Twinkie recipe”, the first result listed (out of 22,500 results) was actually for Mom’s Hopeless Twinkles_© recipe, which I had shared in a previous blog post, on this website, in 2019! [It can also be found in the “Recipes” tab and near the end of this blog post.]

Additionally, I’d also like to give a shout-out to PressReader.com, for printing a copy of one of Mom’s Twinkie imitations, with proper credit given to her! You can check it out at https://www.pressreader.com/usa/orlando-sentinel/20121128/282398396711181! In my search, I also found the following excerpt of interest… as seen at https://www.food.com/recipe/hostess-twinkie-sponge-cake-356820/reviews/846730.

“Review [of homemade Hostess Twinkies] by Tinkerbell (4/10/2009) – NorthwestGal recommended this recipe to me & when I looked at it I was so surprised! I can’t say that I have made this exact recipe, but I can help shed some light on its origin & say that I have made it’s later version, also by Gloria. I saw Gloria Pitzer for the first time on the Phil Donahue show on April 8, 1993. I immediately called & ordered the original transcript of the show. (No TiVo back then! LOL) Gloria Pitzer, the original recipe detective, had been “cloning” recipes for 20 years but got her real jump start when she was working at a newspaper that decided to add a food page. The first letter she opened asked, “How do they make that special sauce at McDonald’s?” She went home & made & remade until she had a sauce that mimicked the Big Mac’s special sauce. After that she branched out into KFC, Wendy’s Frosty & Chili, Oreo cookies and Hostess Twinkies. But, after only 6 weeks doing the new food page for the paper she lost her job because one of her clone recipes (Share A Lease cheesecake) “stepped on the toes of a famous cheesecake company that was also a sponsor of the paper”. She made up new names for her copycat recipes, like Wednesday’s chili (I have that posted here Recipe #21936), Gloreo Cookies (love that recipe!), Big Bucket in the Sky Chicken, Big Match special sauce & Hopeless Twinkles. She first appeared on the Donahue show in July of 1981 and within 90 days the Donahue show received over one million letters about her episode. She appeared again 12 years later, in 1993, when I was lucky enough to be watching with my newborn son. After comparing this recipe with the one I’ve made from the 1993 transcript I see she did alter the recipe quite a bit. She made them on the 1981 episode and again with her new version in 1993. I’ve made the newest version from my transcript. I look forward to trying this one as well. 🙂 Thanks for posting it, Max!”

#LearnSomethingNewEveryDay

Did you know… on August 19^th, 1919… William B. Ward registered the trademark name, Hostess, for his family’s company’s breads and cakes? Additionally, it was James Dewar, who invented the Twinkie_® while working for the Ward family at the Continental Baking Company. Originally, when the baking company was founded in the early 1900s, it was called Ward Baking Company. Later, as the Continental Baking Company, it was purchased by Interstate Bakeries Corporation and renamed Hostess Brands.

For a more in-depth history of the Ward family, their baking company, Dewar’s Twinkies® and the drama that surrounded all of them, check out this fascinating article about it (as written by Bloomberg News), on FinancialPost.com, at https://business.financialpost.com/news/twinkie-history-spiced-with-murder-scandal-suggests-icon-will-survive! I’ve included, below, the short story that Mom wrote about Dewar decades ago.

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective, (Balboa Press, Jan. 2018, p. 204)

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

JAMES DEWAR

JAMES DEWAR STARTED OUT driving a horse-drawn wagon in Chicago and, by 1930, was manager of the Continental Baking Company’s Chicago establishment. He invented ‘The Twinkie’, a sponge-type cake with creamy vanilla-flavored filling [in the early 30s.] It has been called the ‘Grand-daddy’ of modern snack foods.

Today, the finger-sized cream-filled cake is as big a confectionery sensation as they were when Dewar first introduced his creation to American cuisine. The company that put out the Twinkie was originally called the Continental Baking Company and later became the Hostess company. At the time, he wanted to give the public something reasonably priced, for the Great Depression of the 30s brought grave times to this country.

Treats like the cream-filled Twinkies, would be a luxury to people who couldn’t afford otherwise. For decades, the appealing factor about the Twinkies national popularity has been that it is affordable! Dewar put 2 cakes in each package, selling them for $.05 a pair. For the price of a nickel, it was quite a bargain. Dewar remembered how the Continental Baking Company was selling small finger-sized shortcakes for strawberry season in the 1930s.

The pans they used to bake them in were not being used except for the spring promotion to produce the shortcakes. He, therefore, came up with the idea of preparing the same shortcake in those pans, but filling each cake with an injection of vanilla cream. The Twinkies became an immediate success!

The idea for the name, on the other hand, came while he was on a business trip to St. Louis and saw a billboard advertising ‘Twinkle Toes Shoes’, which was, then, a terrific sales pitch. The name ‘Twinkies’ was a spinoff of that shoe advertisement. From then on, the cakes took off.

When Dewar retired from Continental in 1968, he boasted often to the press that he ate scores of Twinkies every day. That’s not a bad endorsement for the critics who claim junk food will shorten your life span.

Do you remember the big run on Twinkies_®, back in November of 2012? The Hostess Brands company had announced it was going out of business and utter chaos ensued as the American masses swarmed their local stores to buy all the yummy, cream-filled, sponge cakes (and other products of Hostess Brands) they could find!

Our Canadian neighbors still had Hostess Brands in their country and were laughing at the lengths Americans were going to get their hands on the suddenly-hard-to-find, coveted Twinkies_®. Some Twinkies_®were actually being auctioned on eBay for THOUSANDS of dollars – and people were paying it! A spokesperson for Hostess sarcastically asked the media where all of these Hostess Brands enthusiasts were before they had to file for bankruptcy.

I saw a great article about Twinkies_® a few years ago that I saved in “My Favorites”. It was called “Beverly Hills Billionaire To Take Over Twinkies Maker, Hostess Brands” and written by James R. Koren (L. A. Times; July 5, 2016), explaining how the Hostess Brands company, under various names and ownerships, was saved from bankruptcy foreclosures more than once over the past century.

When the announcement was first made in 2012 that Hostess Brands was closing their business for good and Americans panicked at their sudden loss, I wasn’t worried about never having Twinkies_® again… because my mom taught me how to make my own! In fact, as the Secret Recipes Detective^TM, Mom taught everyone how to make their own at home!

Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Americanized Irish

Happy Monday and happy Irish-American Heritage Month to EVERYONE! After all, don’t we all feel a bit of the blarney blood running through our veins this time of year! But I especially look forward to Mondays because they are my 52 Chances each year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with all of you!

#TheRecipeDetective

#IrishAmericanHeritage

#StPatricksDay

#NationalCornedBeefAndCabbageDay

We are half-way through March and the official start of spring is just days away, now. Additionally, one of the month-long observances happening in March is the commemoration of Irish-American Heritage Month. In relation, Wednesday is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and National Corned Beef and Cabbage Day!

#LearnSomethingNewEveryDay

Did you know that corned beef and cabbage really isn’t the traditional feast in Ireland for the observance of the St. Patrick’s Day holiday? Irish (Lamb/Mutton) Stew and Soda Bread is likely to be what’s for dinner in most of the homes observing St. Patrick’s Day on “The Emerald Isle” (nicknamed as such for the country’s legendary rolling, green hills and lush landscapes).

BACON and Cabbage, however, is a very popular dish in Ireland. But it’s not what Americans consider bacon. Irish bacon is a cut of pork also known as “back bacon”, which is very similar to Canadian bacon but with more fat in the cut. Like everything else that comes our way, the dish was Americanized into CORNED BEEF and Cabbage.

The Irish, who immigrated here hundreds of years ago, learned to adjust their traditional dish, with “Irish bacon”, to the cheaper cut of corned beef as it was much more accessible and affordable than “back bacon”. Thus, a new Irish-American tradition was born.

By the way, Mom often wrote about being versatile in cooking throughout many of her newsletters and cookbooks. She frequently gave a variety of options in a lot of her recipes, depending on tastes or availability of ingredients. When Mom changed up a dish, she called it “Pitzerizing” the recipe.

Did you also know that St. Patrick’s Day (aka: “Feast Day”) is not celebrated in Ireland the same as it is here, in America? In Ireland, it is more of a religious observation that started about four centuries ago – in the 1600s – to observe the life and death of St. Patrick; who was a captured “Brit”, enslaved to the Irish Protestants. He had escaped to France, but later returned to Ireland, on a mission to convert the pagans to Christianity.

The “battle” of Christians vs. Protestants has split Ireland for centuries. In fact, on the Irish flag, the white stripe between the green and orange stripes is supposed to symbolize the peace between the Roman Catholic majority (represented in the green) and the Protestant minority (represented in the orange).

The celebrations for this holiday, which we’ve come to enjoy even if we aren’t Irish, were originally started here by the Protestant immigrants from Northern Ireland. Ironically, it’s considered taboo to wear orange in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.

Great information on how St. Patrick and the holiday in his honor is viewed by both the Christian and Protestant communities, on the “divided” island of Ireland, can be found in a great article by Marie McKeown, called “Can Orange Mix With Green?” (April 4, 2017) at Owlcation.com.

The St. Patrick’s Day celebration that started in the U.S. in the 1700s, was a way for the oppressed immigrants, who were living here, to show pride in (and teach others about) their culture. Here, the holiday has evolved into more of a pagan celebration of the Americanized Irish “culture”; as opposed to Ireland’s somber, religious observation of a “saint”.

However, we celebrate with Celtic-infused parades, music, dancing, and food. Somewhere along the way, Americans also added drinking green beer to the other Irish-American traditions for the holiday; which isn’t done in Ireland. In fact, bars (and most businesses) are closed in Ireland for the sacred observance.

The first St Patrick’s Day parade ever recorded was in Boston on March 18^th, 1737. The Americanization of the holiday has created many symbolisms for St. Patrick’s Day, including a LOT of green, a bit o’ blarney, Celtic knots, four-leaf clovers, leprechauns, pots of gold at the ends of rainbows and the-LUCK-of-the-Irish!

The old Irish legend about kissing the Blarney Stone (which is located at Blarney Castle), claims that’s how one gets the “Gift of the Gab” (eloquence or skillful flattery, for persuasion). “Blarney” actually means skillful flattery, as well as nonsense and cajolery.

The catchphrase about having “the luck of the Irish” originated in the “old west”, in the late 1800s, when a large number of the most successful miners of the “Gold Rush” era happened to be of Irish decent.

According to Irish folklore, leprechauns were cantankerous little charlatans. Supposedly they lived alone and passed the time, when they weren’t performing shenanigans, by mending the shoes of the Irish fairies. Traditional leprechauns were Americanized, as well, into good-natured, pranking imps, who soon became symbols of both, St. Patrick’s Day and Ireland, in general.

I don’t know if our family has any Irish ancestry or not, but I do know that several members of my family have been known to be relatively “lucky” and some are even quite talented in the “art” of blarney, as well. I don’t think I have either trait but I’m sure Mom had more than a bit of both!

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

No Laughing Matter (circa 1970s)

JUST A HOUSEWIFE AND A PRO!

As a ‘suburban housewife’, I fail to see how anyone could classify my routine as ‘dull’! For one thing, everyone knows that the mother of an active family has no routine! We’re lucky if we can get our slippers on the right feet first thing in the morning.

In fact, we’re lucky if we can even find those slippers, having to, first, plow through an undergrowth of Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs on the way to the kitchen, where we must witness testy debates over who gets the [prize] in the box of [cereal] and why a 40-year-old man refuses to take the Donald Duck Thermos in his lunch…

What’s wrong with a quest for a roll of Scotch tape that’s your very own or having the phone ring and the call is for you instead of your teenager? [Margaret Mead’s] working definition [of a ‘first-class’ woman, not being a housewife or homemaker,] is a ‘trained, competent, professional woman’.

Now, I’d be the last one to contradict an expert, but in defense of women who become wives and mothers… we have had training (although much of it’s on the job), are extremely competent and are professional [according to Webster’s dictionary] in that we have ‘a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or skill’…

If you don’t think it takes learning or skill to varnish a complex-of-disorder with enough love and efficiency that husbands and children grow up with security and comfort, drop around my kitchen some Sunday night…

No matter what they tell us [working-outside-the-home homemakers] about turning our kids over to a day care center, there’s nothing like coming home from school to know that Mom’s in the kitchen, whipping up a pitcher of Tang and a plate of [Hopeless Twinkles_©].