We hardly ever indulged in sweets back in 1974. We didn’t need the sugar since we could just as easily get our fix from one of the sweet liqueurs being passed around the lunch table. That’s probably one of the reasons this pie doesn’t taste very good. When a person doesn’t like desserts, they aren’t likely to make good ones.
All is not lost for this pie though. What it lacks in flavour, it makes up for in thrifty convenience, which is the only thing that mattered when entertaining with Linda and Joy. The other huge benefit to making this pie is that the whole thing can be made in the Osterizer blender because it’s the only one with innovative blend settings, such as stir, crush, and blend, all at varying speeds, carefully labeled so you know which one to use and when. The settings make all the difference and those other unsophisticated blenders out there on the market can’t compare. I’m looking at you, Vitamix. That’s right, using an Osterizer blender will mean this pie comes out luxuriously smooth, so smooth in fact that’s where we found this next collection of photos of the Terrific Women, in Roberta Flack’s super-smooth album, Killing Me Softly.
Cottage cheese—along with the ground ham Joy favoured and Linda’s flavour extender cooking-crutch—was a real Terrific Women stand-by. It was a powerhouse of the kitchen, excellent in savoury jell-o molds, cheesy lasagnas, and of course mixed into Joy’s famous canned salmon salad. When they weren’t cooking with it, they would often make beauty masks from it, mixing in a little bit of French dressing, which would stain their skin to give them a subtle orange glow, making it look like they’d spent the entire day at the beach.
This week has been an absolute blast and we’re sad to have it end. We’re both so grateful to Linda and Joy, as well as the amazing camera operator and film editor Tristan Gough, and producer of Terrific Women, Laura Pharo. Tristan and Laura worked behind-the-scenes like me and Jen but often went far and beyond the call of duty—as you can imagine, working with Linda and Joy took some special handling.
As you’ll see in the clip below, shooting didn’t always go as planned and when things went awry, Linda and Joy had a tendency to get frazzled. Often after one of their spells, Laura would sit with Joy and macramé an animal to calm her down, while Tristan applied a booze bandage to Linda’s attitude. This would occur often enough that Jen and I could go off on long breaks to the nearest roller rink mid-day for an hours-worth of funky tunes and chill skating. We got so good at it that we won the Toronto Roller Skating Championships of ’76!
We hope you’ve enjoyed all the little snippets and glimpses into our past lives! 40 years in the business has given us a plethora of stories to tell so once our stomachs settle from all this superb grub, maybe we’ll revisit some of our other odd jobs we’ve taken on. Now let’s give 70s Week the send-off it’s deserves with this Cottage Cheese Pie!
Cottage Cheese Pie
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 egg yolks
1 envelope unflavoured gelatine
1/4 cup hot milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups creamed cottage cheese
1 prepared graham cracker crumb crust
1 small can of mandarin oranges, to garnish
Combine the lemon juice, egg yolks, and gelatine into a blender. Cover and process at the “stir” setting a few seconds, then remove the feeder cap and gradually pour in the hot milk and sugar. Replace the cap and process for about 1 minute until the gelatine is fully dissolved. Stop the blender and add the cottage cheese. Return the lid and push the “blend” button, processing until smooth and well blended. Pour into prepared crust and chill until set. Garnish with slices of canned mandarins.
