Linda Seccaspina shares three fabulous shots from a Flash Cadillac photoshoot at Ottawa’s Skateway Roller Disco in 1979. Writes Linda: “The other day Lost Ottawa posted memories of Skateway on Morrison Drive, which is now Lee Valley Tools. We did a few fashion shows there and this is one from 1979. When I look at the clothing now, I realize we were lunar years away from everyone in fashion LOLOL! My store Flash Cadillac on Rideau Street in Ottawa was the first business in Canada to start using lycra spandex for active wear and bathing suits. I remember trudging down to New York for it, and also that the first plant to begin making cotton lycra (in the 1980s) was in Granby, Quebec. Memories of the past… Thanks Lost Ottawa for reminding me.”
My books always include a recipe or two, and the day I found this recipe I was almost arrested by the Vice Squad. I was holding a basic Brownie recipe the whole time while I was arguing with someone who thought he was Serpico.
Why was I arguing with him you ask?
Because, he thought I was letting children play with vibrators.
Was he kidding me?
I may be a few fries short of a Happy Meal sometimes, but that would never happen under my watch.
Flash Cadilac, as most of you remember, had a small naughty novelty section. It wasn’t huge, and maybe all of three shelves in a plexi glass cube that had a lock on it. It was way before it’s time, and I bought everything from a place of ” ill repute” on Canal Street in New York City. It was harmless stuff in those days. A few cheezy gaping mouth rubber dolls, vibrators, creams, and lotions. Nothing like on the scales of today.
A customer of mine got so furious I would not take back a dress she had worn a few times. I told her I would give her a credit, but no refund, as it was ready for the trash. I thought I was being more than fair. So, she did what every other angry customer does. She called the Vice Squad and told them I was allowing children to play with sex toys from the case. Because my store was so eclectic and then there were the assumptions that I was created in hell, they believed her.
A day later after the incident, as I was carrying on a conversation clutching the recipe, a crowd of lumberjack storm troopers came busting through my store looking for the alleged toddlers playing with the battery operated devices. They ravaged the place looking for over an hour. As I stood there arms akimbo wearing a Dolly Parton wig they tried to bust me for a gift box holding a set of gold balls.
Gold Balls?
Yes, these cracker jacks were mixed up just like I was when I first bought those things. I thought the Harmony Balls were for hand relaxation at first. Then, I was told the hard cold truth, and realized that the strings attached to the balls were not for Eastern peace and tranquility.
So I asked them to show me where Ben Wa Balls were illegal.They couldn’t, so they moved on.
So Francois, as I shall call him, asked me why I was allowing young children to play with the pleasure goods.I began to laugh, and became furious, and said he was seizing everything that looked questionable. For another hour they pillaged every inch. All they could come up with was one lone item. It was a hot pink vibrator that had a bear climbing up a tree. Turned on, the bear went into motion. The rest you can discuss amongst yourselves. He put it barely three inches from my face and said,
“This MADAM will be seized.”
I began to laugh, and told him if he thought that looked like a realistic male penis, then he had an anatomy problem.
Off they went with the contraband vibrator never ever to be seen again. Myself? I went home and made the brownies.
So that’s today’s story girls and boys. The secret to these brownies is two things:
Do not over bake them, and the frosting. Putting the frosting on top of the hot brownies makes it turn to a fudge consistency.
Linda’s Adult Brownies
8 tbsp butter, margarine or whatever you use.
4 ounces of semisweet chocolate coarsely chopped up. I use chocolate chips
2 large eggs at room temperature
Pinch of salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup chopped walnuts if you want nuts.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Lightly grease a ‘square’ pan
I melt the butter in the microwave, but you can also melt the butter in a small sauce pan over low heat.
Next add the chocolate. I take the bowl out of the microwave and add the chips. The I nuke it for 45 seconds. I take it out and stir and voila, they are all melted.
In a large bowl combine the eggs and salt and bet them for 30 seconds.
Gradually add the sugar and continue to beat until light. About a minute or so.
Add the vanilla, the melted chocolate, and butter and beat until smooth.
With a spoon, stir in the flour until just blended. Add the walnuts if you want them and pour into prepared pan.
Bake about 25 minutes.
I wait until they are firm on top, but never crusty and pulling away from the sides of the pans.
Keep them moist people.
Frosting
4 ounces of chocolate either coarsely chopped or again I use the chocolate chips.
A couple tablespoons of butter or it’s equivalent
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup of milk, cream or Carnation Milk and keep adding if needed.
I melt the butter and chocolate the same way as the brownies in the microwave.
You do not want a thick or runny frosting.
Medium consistency, so it flows like lava on the top of the brownies.
When the brownies come out of the oven, immediately put the frosting on top. Yes, Immediately.
You need a few hours for the frosting to set, but it is so worth it.
Variations:
I also can put peanut butter chips in the batter, and then sub the chocolate chips in the frosting for the peanut butter ones for a sort of peanut butter cup brownie also shown in the picture.
But those are only for a real sweet tooth as they are very sweet, but still luscious.
As announced last week, Miss Lillian Scott of Almonte won first prize in the Canada Packers’ September Domestic Shortening Contest which appeared in the columns of Chatelaine. A letter from Brenda York who conducted the column, and the recipe follows:
Canada Packers Limited Food Clinic,
Toronto, Canada. 29th, October, 1948.
To -Miss Lillian J. Scott, Box 292, Almonte, Ontario.
Dear Miss Scott:— This is indeed good news: I am most happy to tell you that your recipe for “Domestic Date Dreams” (which we have taken the liberty of renaming) has been awarded the First Prize in my September “Domestic” Shortening Contest.
It also gives me a great deal of pleasure to enclose Canada Packers’ cheque for One Hundred Dollars—the amount of the first prize. I wish you could have heard the Judges’ comments on your most delicious cookies—and seen how quickly they disappeared. They were so light and flavourful— quite unlike any other cookie recipe received in the contest.
The Domestic Shortening contest provided a precedent in that the panel of Judges decided that with so many delicious cakes and cookies Selected as finalists, two First Prizes would be given this month.
So, we are also playing “Santa Claus” to Mrs. D. S. Cummings, of East Kildonan, Manitoba for her fine recipe for “Orange Coconut Domestic Cake.” Your recipe and your name will appear in my column in the December magazine. So, I hope you will look for it there. Once again, my most sincere congratulations. I do hope you will continue to look for my magazine column each month, and will send along your favorite recipes.
Yours very sincerely,
BRENDA YORK. –
The recipe was sent to the ‘Good-Things-To-Eat reporter’ for Canada Packers – a fictional character named Brenda York, who was played by Kathleen Kay Hodgins (a U of T alumna), Mihalache says. Canada Packers was integrated into Maple Leafs Food in the early 1990s. Brenda York of Canada Packers, played by Kathleen ‘Kay‘ Hodgins, promoted the potential of that company’s margarine product, ‘Margene’ .. Read more here.. CLICK
“Domestic Date Dreams”
Ingredients
¼ cup or shortening or butter
¾ cup of brown sugar
½ tsp. of vanilla extract
1 ¼ cup of flour
½ tsp. of baking soda
¼ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. of salt
¼ tsp. of cinnamon
1/8 tsp. of nutmeg
½ cup if sour cream
2/3 cup of chopped dates
2 eggs
Method
Preheat oven at 400°F.
Cream together, shortening/butter, sugar and vanilla.
Add eggs and mix well.
Sift dry ingredients and add to the shortening/butter mixture alternatively with sour cream.
Add the dates and nuts last. (The nuts were not initially listed in the ingredients)
Drop good heapings of the batter on a greased baking sheet.
Bake at 400°F for 10 minutes.
recipeby Miss Lillian J. Scott of Almonte, Ontario
So how did all this start? It began innocently enough with an online friend’s posting after I posted the recipefor cranberry pie.Then she added pickles on it!!!Really? Really???
For all you doubters my friend Antoinette made this pie and sent me the picture.
From Antoinette
My next desserts with pickles challenge thanks to Linda Seccaspina who knows I can’t resist. But I think I will try a combo of sweet and sour pickles finely chopped with crystallized ginger; that will make a lovely carmelized crust. The pickles in the photo don’t even look cooked. All y’all going ewww are gonna be sorry!
So not content, I searched far and wide for another pickle pie recipe and found this beauty. Would Antoinette try this one too? I loved it!! —after all… A ‘naughty pickle’ is how I’d best describe myself.
The UTAH PICKLE PIE
Utah Pickle Pie
UPDATE So yesterday I posted a pickle pie recipe and said I needed to make it because well–pickle, pie, it was a direct challenge. Some of you laughed, some of you scoffed. But I shall have the last laugh because it is FABULOUS!! It’s like a sugar cream pie with the sweet pickles carmelizing the top.
This morning I got an email from a producer at WHDH TV in Boston—“Hi LInda, I’m a producer at 7News in Boston. This recipe is taking over the internet! Can we please use the photo of your Cranberry Pickle Pie on air and online with courtesy to you? Thanks!”So let this go to show you– it does not matter how hard and long you work on history pieces, or columns or anything like that. When it comes down to it– you don’t need to pose naked…Pickle Pie will get them every time LOLOL
and it made FOX news…
and then it made Mashed and it get going on and on.. and again I did not have to get naked for it to go viral
Twitter Can’t Believe The 2 Ingredients In This Thanksgiving Pie
The now-viral cranberry pickle pie is exactly what it sounds like — a traditional cranberry pie topped with pickle slices. It’s garnered a lot of attention on Twitter, as people have responded to what many think is a horrendous, disgusting combination — and an abomination that doesn’t deserve a spot on the Thanksgiving dessert table. “Never heard of that before. Not sure that I want to again,” one person commented, while another wrote, “Hell no would I eat this, it sounds horrible.” Even celebrity chefs Alex Guarnaschelli and Duff Goldman have Tweeted their disapproval of the pie. read more here….
Jaan Kolk It’s difficult to believe butter tarts were invented in Barrie, Ont. in 1900. The claim is actually “first printed butter tart recipe”, based on Mrs. Malcolm MacLeod’s small submission to a cookbook published to raise funds for Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital.
977-08 Opening of the Royal Victoria Hospital, 1897, Copyright: Public Domain
None of the other recipes claim to be original, and it’s difficult to believe no one in the world ever made a simple tart filling consisting mostly of sugar and butter before. Here’s what was in the cookbook:
Jaan was right—–While butter tarts are known around the world as the quintessential Canadian dish, the invention of this confection actually goes back to before Canada was even a country. During a ten-year period, from 1663 to 1673, at least 770 young women were sent to Quebec by Louis XIV to help with colonization. These single ladies were sent with dowries to help boost settlement in New France, meaning they were going to marry, then cook, clean and procreate (the baby boom after this immigration was bigger than post-WWII). These King’s Daughters (or Filles du Roi) as they came to be known did what any resourceful baker would do: they made do with what they had. With the abundance of new food they created the butter tart forerunner with baking ingredients readily available like maple sugar and dried fruit. This ancestral tart later led to variations like tarte au sucre and the butter tart.
Jaan Kolk It would be quite a task to scour old cookbooks for a similar recipe, but it’s easy to search newspaper archives for the term “butter tart” (a term not even used in the Barrie cookbook.) Here’s what I found:
1889-1891, several US newspapers published “The Uncle from America” from a French work “The French Epoch.” Uncle Bruno had returned from America and was coming to see his family at his birthplace, near Dieppe. All were keen to impress the uncle. The description of the spread which had been prepared ended with “…and a butter-tart completed the bill of fare which made the children exclaim with delight.”
January 31, 1899, a “cheering, clean, and cheap” Montreal eatery advertised in the Gazette a 10-cent meal which could include butter tarts.
Jaan is right on this too. Throughout the early 1900s butter tarts gained popularity and variations were published in Toronto’s Daily News and included in the 1911 Canadian Farm Cook Book. Butter tarts became all the rage in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the 1980s readers were desperately writing The Vancouver Sun’s fictional baking expert, Edith Adams, for a copy of her recipe.
he Queen of Tarts from 1931. Photo, Chatelaine.
Jaan KolkLinda, I had come across recipes for lemon butter and apple butter for tarts and pies from the 19th century, but considered them somewhat far from the filling in butter tarts. Pecan pie, I think, is closer.
Working for a logging camp one might come across something unusual in the thick forests. One day working in the Gilmour camp near Maniwaki they came upon a camp of 15 Natives all worse from wear from liquor.
They insisted the white men stay for dinner and when the group of men declined the natives grew angry. Rather than see their sentiments grow deeper they decided to stay for dinner. A large pot hung over the campfire and smelled of meat stew. The men soon found out it was Beaver stew, which they were eager to try.
When the Beaver was served the men found out that the meat was good eating, but carelessly prepared. Chunks of fur was still attached and one of them got served a Beaver leg still with the claws on it. Needless to say they had to act with great finesse not to irritate their dinner hosts who ate the Beaver stew hair and all.
The story ends that then men were might thankful to get away from the drunken dinner party without the Natives attacking them. Gossip says it was 3 to 1.
BEAVER STEW RECIPE
2-3 lbs 1 inch cubes beaver
Bacon grease
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 medium onions
1/2 lb carrots
6 medium potatoes
2 stalks celery
DIRECTIONS:
Combine flour, salt and pepper in a closable bag or 2 quart closable plastic container and shake until mixed. Add beaver and shake until well coated.
Dice onions. Melt enough bacon grease in the bottom of a fry pan to sauté onions and beaver. Sauté onions and floured beaver in bacon grease, adding more grease as needed. Place sautéed cubes and onions in a 4 quart pot with enough water to cover. Add water to fry pan to remove the remainder of the bacon grease and flour. Add this pan gravy to your stew.
Slice carrots and dice celery. Add carrots and celery to your stew and simmer until beaver is somewhat tender (about 30 minutes). Taste broth and add salt or pepper to taste. Cut potatoes into 1 inch cubes and add enough water to just cover the meat and vegetables. Simmer until potatoes are done (about 30 minutes)
This week my friend Bobby Lyons from Cincinnati posted a Walmart Facebook ad that has actually been rolling around since 2018 (you’re slippin RG) for “funeral potatoes” from Walmart. Yup, you read that correctly. But what are they?
Believe it or not, “Funeral Potatoes” is not actually their technical name–it’s usually something like Cheesy Potato Casserole. These are often found served with ham on festive holiday dinner tables as well as luncheons following funerals which, shockingly, is how they got their name.
Why are funeral potatoes are so delicious? We chalk it up to the heartfelt care and sympathy with which they’re prepared. I’m not crying. You’re crying carbs and fats which make us happy. Though they have a sombre name, funeral potatoes are truly the ultimate comfort food. Potatoes to die for and Walmart’s version has a shelf life of up to 18 months! Holy Mother of you know who!
A dish of funeral potatoes is supposedly a way to show your support and sympathy for a grieving family. To make them yourself, and you could follow the Pioneer Woman’s go-to funeral potatoes recipe. The ingredients list isn’t long, nor fancy either. While it’s not difficult to put together, it does bake up into a truly comforting and filling side dish. Her recipe includes as a base frozen shredded hash brown potatoes, which makes the casserole prep even easier. It also includes assorted cheeses, sour cream, and a topping of kettle-cooked potato chips, among other ingredients. While you are at she also has a funeral episode you might want to take a gander at.
Upon doing a little digging through my dusty mind I discovered I’ve actually had funeral potatoes many times, which I always knew as cheesy hash browns. There are countless variations of the casserole-type side dish, but the general recipe calls for ‘taters, cheese, some kind of cream soup, sour cream, and a crunchy top made of cereal or potato chips. Life could be tragic, if some things weren’t so darn funny. I just figured out that lint from my dryer is actually the remains of my missing socks.
Alex Knisely — When I brings ’em I cooks ’em and I hands ’em over to the kinfolk of the dear departed, sayin’, Take the salt off the table when you serve these, darlin’, ’cause they’re watered with my tears.
I miss Strauss Banana Chocolate Ice Cream I used to buy at the Berkelely Bowl in California. The sweet flavors of roasted, ripe bananas and chocolate chips blended into a smooth, rich dessert. So I attempted to bring back the taste today– and I went via the highway and instead of using regular chocolate chips I used small Bulk Barn chocolate medallions.
This is an amazing recipe but:
It says 55 minutes baking time- check it at 47 minutes and don’t use anything but chocolate chips because some of the medallions melted fully and formed a loaf bottom that was a little crusty although everyone else said it was great!
This fruitcake is probably circulating within the family since Great Grandma made it in 1927.This Wesson Oil fruitcake recipe was published in the January 1927 issue of Ladies Home Journal. Pass it on. Great-Grandma would be proud
Wesson’s Famous Fruit Cake
Ingredients
1 cup Wesson Oil
1½ cups brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
3 cups sifted Gold Medal flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp allspice
1 tsp cloves
1 cup pineapple, apple or orange juice
1 cup chopped candied pineapple
1 cup thinly sliced citron
1½ cups whole candied cherries
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped dried figs
1 cup coarsely chopped Diamond Walnuts
2 cups coarsely chopped mixed nuts
Instructions
Mix together oil, brown sugar and eggs in a bowl. Vigorously beat with a spoon or electric mixer for two minutes.
Sift together 2 cups of flour and rest of dry ingredients. Stir into oil mixture alternately with the juice.
Sift remaining cup of flour over combined fruits and nuts. Pour batter over fruit and mix.
Line 2 greased loaf pans with paper. Pour batter into pans. Place a pan of water on lower rack of oven.
Bake cakes for 2½ to 3 hours in a slow oven (275 degrees). *Mine took 2½ hours to bake*
Cool on racks without removing paper. When cool, remove paper and seal in a covered container in a cool place to ripen.
Stephen Giles Photos
Maintaining a 90 year old tradition…. Stephen Giles
Normally I bake these on November 11th but this year decided to get an early start. The recipe is from an Ottawa Journal newspaper clipping my Grandmother clipped from the Ottawa Citizen in 1927.
As Stephen told me:
Soak it Jamaican rum And wrap in cheesecloth, plastic wrap and foil
Keep in cool spot. I put it in refrigerator. Because there’s so much fruit, at room temp you can’t cut them
lindaseccaspina 