Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / New Year's 2025, Good Luck/Bad Luck Foods and Crazy Leftover To-Dos!

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New Year's 2025, Good Luck/Bad Luck Foods and Crazy Leftover To-Dos! · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:01
  Nancy May: Happy New Year, Sylvia.
• 0:03
  Can you believe it's 2025?
• 0:05
  Sylvia Lovely: No.
• 0:06
  Oh, no.
• 0:07
  But, you know, there's some good things about 2025.
• 0:10
  too much to go into, but you and I have had our challenges, but, hey, we're ready.
• 0:14
  Let's go for it, okay?
• 0:16
  Hey, one thing I wanted to tell you, though, this is the only time
• 0:19
  of the year you want to be a loser.
• 0:21
  Nancy May: yeah.
• 0:22
  Sylvia Lovely: That weight you put on with all that peanut butter
• 0:24
  fudge, which is my all time favorite.
• 0:27
  Nancy May: Oh, I'm not a big fudge fan, but my dad was a fudge fan.
• 0:30
  And transporting fudge is not easy.
• 0:33
  Like you pack it up and it either gets smooshed or it melts, or it looks
• 0:37
  like something you'd wipe off the bottom of your shoe when you're done.
• 0:40
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, my mother in law made the best.
• 0:42
  I mean, it's just that right creaminess, you know?
• 0:45
  Nancy May: maybe Grandmama made better fudge than the
• 0:47
  kind that you get at the store
• 0:48
  Sylvia Lovely: I think so.
• 0:49
  Nancy May: it's all sugary and crystallizing.
• 0:52
  Sylvia Lovely: No, no, no.
• 0:52
  Her's was powerful.
• 0:54
  Okay, yeah, let's go for it.
• 0:56
  Superstitions, now we've covered that a lot
• 0:58
  Nancy May: We, we have covered superstitions, but I got a few new ones
• 1:03
  for you because, after drinking a few glasses of champagne, well, maybe more
• 1:07
  than a few glasses of champagne, I think we need some good luck to get us out
• 1:11
  of the hangover from the old year and into something new for the new year.
• 1:15
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
• 1:15
  And what you're not supposed to do, maybe,
• 1:18
  Nancy May: Yeah, what you're not supposed to do.
• 1:19
  You're not supposed to drink too much champagne.
• 1:23
  Sylvia Lovely: drink wine.
• 1:24
  There's never too much wine.
• 1:25
  Nancy May: Well, That's true.
• 1:26
  A little bubble goes a long way.
• 1:29
  So I've got a few foods that are kind of weird that I never even thought of.
• 1:32
  Things that we eat every day.
• 1:33
  Well, maybe not every day, but the superstition on things that you
• 1:38
  shouldn't eat, because you don't want to add good, or well, you don't
• 1:42
  want to add bad luck to the new year, is you shouldn't eat chicken.
• 1:46
  Like, isn't that weird?
• 1:47
  Sylvia Lovely: No way.
• 1:48
  Nancy May: Yeah,
• 1:49
  Sylvia Lovely: live on chicken.
• 1:50
  Nancy May: I know, right?
• 1:50
  Chicken and fish and everything else, but chicken specifically, and you know why?
• 1:55
  Sylvia Lovely: Why?
• 1:56
  Nancy May: Well, apparently, I've never owned a chicken, but we've
• 1:59
  Sylvia Lovely: No, and I hope never to.
• 2:01
  Nancy May: Yeah, I might want to do that for some fresh eggs, but even still,
• 2:06
  they say that chickens scratch backwards.
• 2:08
  I never, like, I
• 2:09
  Sylvia Lovely: No, I'm trying to visualize a chicken.
• 2:11
  Nancy May: Right, I never observed a chicken behavior patterns.
• 2:14
  Sylvia Lovely: never saw that as being on my life plan to observe a chicken.
• 2:18
  But now you're going to make me want to do it.
• 2:21
  By the way, you're the one that can have chickens now, because you've
• 2:24
  got a country kind of place that
• 2:25
  Nancy May: Yeah, we got a couple acres that we're moving into fairly soon,
• 2:29
  actually, about this recording, we should be moving in a fairly soon, but
• 2:33
  as of the new year, we should be there.
• 2:36
  So you will be
• 2:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, you know, do you know how many varieties of chickens there are?
• 2:41
  It's pretty amazing.
• 2:43
  Nancy May: I certainly can't count them on one hand for
• 2:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I mean, and it's like the meat is supposed to be different.
• 2:47
  I'm just like, chicken, give me chicken, except for the new year.
• 2:51
  I'll wait a couple of months.
• 2:52
  Oh,
• 2:55
  Nancy May: that does this.
• 2:56
  And there's some funny chickens, I grew up riding horses and you're in horse
• 3:00
  country, but there are these chickens that have these poofy heads and feet.
• 3:04
  And when my husband saw them for the first time, they used to run
• 3:06
  around the barns where I was.
• 3:08
  He would call them draft chickens, like draft horses, because they
• 3:12
  had the feathers on their feet.
• 3:13
  Sylvia Lovely: how funny.
• 3:15
  Nancy May: chickens, because they kind of look like poodles.
• 3:16
  So next time anybody listening sees these chickens that have poofy hair and
• 3:20
  poofy feet, you just either think that they're poodle chickens or draft chickens.
• 3:24
  Sylvia Lovely: to ask, get a little off subject, but did
• 3:26
  they hang around the horses?
• 3:27
  Was it a special breed because they got along with horses
• 3:30
  or horse whisperer birds?
• 3:32
  I don't know.
• 3:35
  Nancy May: I don't think so.
• 3:36
  I think these chickens were kind
• 3:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Just came
• 3:38
  Nancy May: they were kind of elitist chickens.
• 3:40
  They were the fancy chickens that the horse owners had and they just, they
• 3:43
  were cool to have around the barn.
• 3:44
  But yeah, they knew how to get away from underfoot pretty
• 3:48
  quickly, but they were pretty cool.
• 3:49
  So chicken is one thing, lobsters, lobster is another one.
• 3:53
  Now, if you're from New England, oh my god, I
• 3:55
  Sylvia Lovely: That's a big deal.
• 3:56
  Yeah.
• 3:57
  Nancy May: I can't think of not eating lobster on New Year's, but lobsters
• 4:00
  or those kind of, you know, spiny crustaceans, they also, they move
• 4:04
  backwards, and they move sideways.
• 4:07
  So, the whole idea here is that you don't want to move things backwards
• 4:11
  when you want to go forward in the New
• 4:12
  Sylvia Lovely: You want to go forward.
• 4:14
  Yeah.
• 4:14
  Nancy May: Yeah, right, and you don't want to go sideways.
• 4:16
  So you don't want to, I wouldn't say put off doing things, but
• 4:20
  you, you don't want to create bad luck that whatever you're doing
• 4:23
  Sylvia Lovely: No.
• 4:24
  Tread lightly.
• 4:26
  Tread very lightly.
• 4:28
  I think that's good.
• 4:29
  Hey, what can we do, though, in 2025?
• 4:32
  What's some new stuff we can do,
• 4:33
  Nancy May: Well, I'm going to add, there's some good luck stuff.
• 4:36
  On the moving forward, it's good luck to eat pork because the pigs,
• 4:41
  again, I have never become friendly with a pig, actually burrow forward.
• 4:45
  So they, they root or the
• 4:47
  rut
• 4:48
  Sylvia Lovely: Root.
• 4:48
  So does my dog.
• 4:49
  Nancy May: Yeah,
• 4:51
  Sylvia Lovely: I don't
• 4:51
  Nancy May: my dog does the same thing.
• 4:53
  Hey, you know how to stop your dog from burrowing in a hole?
• 4:57
  Sylvia Lovely: Howl, Howl, Uh,
• 5:02
  Nancy May: from a dog trainer.
• 5:03
  You take some of their dog poops and you put it in the hole where they're
• 5:07
  digging and then you cover it over so that when they dig, surprise,
• 5:11
  you don't want to dig into that.
• 5:14
  But it does work.
• 5:15
  We tried that.
• 5:15
  It's like, oh, the problem is getting the poop in the hole.
• 5:18
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, Well,
• 5:20
  Nancy May: But I guess, lucky pork.
• 5:22
  Good for you, I certainly wouldn't want to be the pig because I don't
• 5:25
  consider that too lucky for the pig.
• 5:27
  Sylvia Lovely: Hey, You Know, It's Supposed To Be Great Animals, So,
• 5:29
  Nancy May: They're supposed to be very Smart,
• 5:31
  Sylvia Lovely: They, An Octopus, And every time we serve octopus in our
• 5:34
  restaurant, I'm always like, But it's such an intelligent animal.
• 5:39
  I am such a bleeding heart.
• 5:41
  I
• 5:44
  Nancy May: animal like an octopus that can change its outfit at the blink of an eye.
• 5:48
  It has multiple brains.
• 5:50
  God knows I need more than one
• 5:51
  Sylvia Lovely: I know.
• 5:52
  Nancy May: It's got all those arms so it can suck good things in
• 5:55
  and like, get away the bad stuff.
• 5:57
  And then it's got a beak.
• 5:59
  It can bite anything it wants to get rid of.
• 6:02
  Sylvia Lovely: I love it.
• 6:03
  I want to grow up and be an octopus or something.
• 6:05
  I could.
• 6:05
  Nancy May: and it chops off an arm.
• 6:07
  I guess it goes back, but I can't imagine that's got to hurt.
• 6:10
  Yeah.
• 6:11
  Octopi,
• 6:11
  Sylvia Lovely: There's a movie or a documentary about that.
• 6:13
  Anyway.
• 6:14
  Nancy May: Oh, there's a great book on that, but we can talk about
• 6:16
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, we'll talk about that later.
• 6:17
  Nancy May: Sauerkraut's another one that's kind of weird.
• 6:19
  Do you know about sauerkraut?
• 6:21
  Sylvia Lovely: I love sauerkraut.
• 6:22
  I do know that.
• 6:23
  Good for me.
• 6:24
  One of the few things that I could eat just tons of that's so good for you.
• 6:27
  Nancy May: Well, it's hard to get really good sauerkraut, right?
• 6:30
  Because some of it's too vinegary and then it's got sort of a nice, you
• 6:33
  know, in the city up in well, I say the city of New York, because that's
• 6:36
  where my point of origination was.
• 6:39
  If you want to call it that is they call them the dirty water hot dogs that were
• 6:43
  on the corners that people would sell in the carts and they always had sauerkraut.
• 6:47
  But the sauerkraut for some reason in those hot dog vendors was always so good.
• 6:52
  It was mild and it was gentle and it was just, it was always like the best.
• 6:56
  And when you buy it and make it yourself, it doesn't seem to be the best, but
• 7:00
  there's a German tradition that's supposed to help you create wealth and
• 7:03
  riches all related around sauerkraut.
• 7:06
  Sylvia Lovely: I'm all in.
• 7:07
  Tell me.
• 7:07
  Nancy May: tell me about it.
• 7:08
  Right.
• 7:08
  And the weird thing is that you're supposed to create a wish for every shred
• 7:12
  of cabbage in the sauerkraut that you eat.
• 7:15
  But, who counts the string of cabbage and sauerkraut?
• 7:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Uh, no, no, no, no, no.
• 7:20
  I'll just eat it.
• 7:22
  And hope for the best in times of luck.
• 7:24
  Nancy May: I do think that's kind of weird.
• 7:26
  But
• 7:26
  Sylvia Lovely: But I do love sauerkraut.
• 7:27
  That's kind of unusual.
• 7:28
  You know, I remember as a kid I loved it.
• 7:31
  Nancy May: yeah, maybe at the stroke of midnight while you're drinking your
• 7:33
  wine and I'm drinking my champagne, we'll count the sauerkraut shreds.
• 7:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 7:37
  Oh, yeah.
• 7:38
  So, New Year's.
• 7:39
  Yeah.
• 7:40
  Wow.
• 7:40
  what else we got?
• 7:41
  Nancy May: we got resolutions
• 7:42
  Sylvia Lovely: And what, what can we do?
• 7:44
  We can start a new tradition, since we're all about tradition, right?
• 7:47
  you have your old ones, you could try a recipe that you've never had before,
• 7:51
  Nancy May: right?
• 7:51
  Or you could try to like something that you didn't eat I am not a fan of spinach.
• 7:55
  I will eat it in lettuce, fresh, but my mom used to force us to eat spinach.
• 8:00
  Well, sorry, mom, maybe force is a strong word, but she'd always
• 8:03
  put it on the plate saying, it's good for you, it's good for you.
• 8:05
  And it was that frozen brick spinach
• 8:07
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, oh
• 8:08
  Nancy May: get like boiled to, I would say, excuse me, listeners, if this
• 8:13
  grosses you out, but it reminds me of snot going down the back of your throat.
• 8:17
  Not that that happened that often, but like when you get that cold
• 8:20
  and that runny, oh, disgusting.
• 8:21
  So I could think it was like green snot.
• 8:23
  My husband loves it.
• 8:25
  You can have your snotty spinach.
• 8:26
  I'll put it in a salad.
• 8:27
  Thank you very much.
• 8:29
  so I guess One of my resolutions will be to try to, to like, or try spinach
• 8:33
  Sylvia Lovely: I just try, and I'll try to eat more green stuff, because
• 8:36
  it's I know it's good for you.
• 8:38
  Nancy May: you know, it's really interesting, talking about the produce
• 8:40
  aisle, is that all this stuff was, growing up, our parents didn't do this.
• 8:45
  It was sort of, you, well, my mom, My mom had this pot that she was,
• 8:52
  I would consider her favorite pot.
• 8:53
  It was an aluminum pot.
• 8:54
  I'm probably going to die of aluminum poisoning at some point in my life.
• 8:57
  But anyway, everything cooked in this one particular pot, whether it was
• 9:01
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 9:01
  She
• 9:02
  Nancy May: whether it.
• 9:02
  was oiled, whatever it was the aluminum pot.
• 9:05
  It's that texture of that, whatever it was, but we didn't
• 9:09
  do those things growing up.
• 9:11
  I think it's kind of cool that we have all these new foods and the traditions that we
• 9:14
  can do to pull out new recipes and ideas and things that we can share together.
• 9:18
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, here's a leftover idea.
• 9:20
  when I was in Duluth, Minnesota with my son, he and I cooked Thanksgiving
• 9:24
  dinner and you had the turkey carcass that was leftover, right?
• 9:27
  Well, I always throw the thing away.
• 9:29
  I shouldn't.
• 9:29
  I go in there and he's got a giant pot and he's cut up the,
• 9:33
  or broken up the The carcass, and he's boiling it with vegetables.
• 9:37
  It's and the consistency was like a thin soup, and it's bone broth,
• 9:42
  but you know, all of that stuff.
• 9:43
  And, and then he's going to use it like all year long.
• 9:46
  Wow.
• 9:46
  Nancy May: All year long.
• 9:48
  Sylvia Lovely: My kid, my kid.
• 9:51
  Nancy May: Well, speaking of your kid, maybe we should take a break right now
• 9:54
  and we'll talk about other leftovers and what we should do in the new years.
• 9:58
  Sylvia Lovely: Sounds great.
• 10:11
  Nancy May: welcome back where we left off with leftovers.
• 10:15
  How appropriate is that?
• 10:16
  Right?
• 10:16
  Sylvia Lovely: I love it.
• 10:17
  Yeah, you can.
• 10:18
  They go a long way too, for those of us who preserve and can and all that stuff.
• 10:22
  I'm amazed
• 10:23
  Nancy May: you mentioned the turkey soup and the turkey
• 10:26
  carcass that your son was making.
• 10:28
  And my, I call my husband, the king of crock pot wonders.
• 10:33
  And it was the instapot.
• 10:34
  He's the instapot king.
• 10:36
  And he takes all the carcasses and he, call it, the never ending pot of soup.
• 10:41
  And before we met, he'd been married and divorced and that was the insta
• 10:45
  pot of the day or the pot that he had was always the endless bottomless pot
• 10:49
  of soup, would feed him and his dog.
• 10:51
  So
• 10:52
  he's taken that tradition forward and taught me how to make soup.
• 10:55
  He makes the best soup, but.
• 10:58
  There are also other leftover things that we have over the Christmas
• 11:01
  holidays, right, because it's not just turkey, it's ham and it's
• 11:03
  all sorts of things that we do.
• 11:05
  Sylvia Lovely: Stuffing.
• 11:05
  Nancy May: Stuffing.
• 11:06
  Stuffing.
• 11:07
  Sylvia Lovely: What do you do with it?
• 11:08
  Nancy May: Oh, I make stuffing sandwiches.
• 11:10
  have you ever had, a bread sandwich?
• 11:11
  So
• 11:12
  my bread sandwich is, bread, stuffing, bread.
• 11:14
  Sylvia Lovely: But the stuffing is so good that you gotta find a use for it.
• 11:17
  Nancy May: Right?
• 11:18
  Sylvia Lovely: And you make it in quantity,
• 11:19
  Nancy May: You need a resolution of a diet after that one, because like, how
• 11:22
  much bread can slather on my thighs?
• 11:24
  Thank you.
• 11:25
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 11:26
  Nancy May: Delicious.
• 11:27
  Sylvia Lovely: I'm still trying to find oyster dressing, by the way.
• 11:29
  Everybody has a year to get me an oyster stuffing recipe.
• 11:33
  Nancy May: Well, I'm gonna find one for you.
• 11:34
  but I don't consider oysters to be a thing in Kentucky.
• 11:37
  That's kind of weird.
• 11:38
  Sylvia Lovely: isn't it, and yet it was Country Cook that
• 11:41
  made the best oyster dressing.
• 11:43
  Ah,
• 11:43
  it just adds that richness to it,
• 11:45
  Nancy May: that must have been the
• 11:46
  Sylvia Lovely: that Class, I don't know that there are any, yeah, there are.
• 11:52
  Most of them are in the horsey world, though.
• 11:54
  Nancy May: So here's another one.
• 11:55
  Yeah, how about, what do you do with leftover gingerbread?
• 11:57
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, tell me.
• 11:58
  Nancy May: there are a couple of things we can do, but I found that there's
• 12:02
  this Scandinavian tradition that you actually burn the gingerbread house.
• 12:08
  To me, that sounds like a rather pyrotechnic feat in the
• 12:12
  kitchen that I probably don't want to do in the kitchen, but,
• 12:15
  Sylvia Lovely: sort of counterintuitive too, you're burning houses.
• 12:18
  Nancy May: like, right?
• 12:19
  But that's what they do.
• 12:20
  They burn, these gingerbread houses.
• 12:22
  Have you ever made a gingerbread house?
• 12:23
  Sylvia Lovely: Never.
• 12:24
  Nancy May: Okay, so I've always wanted to do 1, but, um, a couple of years
• 12:28
  ago, you know, how are they have these kits in the grocery stores?
• 12:32
  So I got like, 4 kits and I made for
• 12:35
  gingerbread at
• 12:35
  Sylvia Lovely: really?
• 12:37
  Were they hard?
• 12:38
  I look
• 12:39
  Nancy May: Oh, they're not hard to do.
• 12:41
  It's kind of fun, but then what do you do with it afterwards?
• 12:44
  And so I gave it away to the neighbors after New Year's and the kid looked at
• 12:48
  me like, yeah, what do I do with this?
• 12:50
  I should have said, here's a match.
• 12:51
  Sylvia Lovely: Were they different styles of houses?
• 12:53
  Oh,
• 12:55
  Nancy May: there was a cottage.
• 12:57
  They had cute little critters that came with it.
• 12:59
  And you put.
• 13:00
  You know, um, was it
• 13:02
  the, um, the powdered sugar on it?
• 13:04
  So, but it was a decoration for a table when we had a party
• 13:07
  and it was kind of fun, but I couldn't get anybody to taste it.
• 13:10
  So,
• 13:11
  Sylvia Lovely: Did you burn them?
• 13:12
  Nancy May: Oh, I didn't burn it.
• 13:13
  I gave him to neighbor's kid.
• 13:14
  I should have burned.
• 13:15
  I said, I should have given him the matches.
• 13:16
  Right.
• 13:17
  But here's some other things you can do with gingerbread houses,
• 13:20
  which I thought were pretty cool.
• 13:21
  Instead of burning them or.
• 13:22
  Chucking them in the garbage, you know, you don't have to
• 13:24
  get really hard and crusty.
• 13:26
  Sylvia Lovely: Uh huh.
• 13:26
  Nancy May: Well, take that, take the pieces, put them in a plastic bag,
• 13:30
  crunch them up and think about the, the crust that you make for, a cream
• 13:36
  cheesecake or something like that,
• 13:38
  you know, the gram.
• 13:39
  So you substitute the gingerbread
• 13:41
  for the graham crackers,
• 13:42
  Sylvia Lovely: That's perfect.
• 13:44
  Nancy May: Or a lemon chiffon pie or I love lemon chiffon pies.
• 13:47
  Oh, my God.
• 13:47
  They're so good.
• 13:48
  They're so
• 13:48
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yes.
• 13:49
  Oh, yes.
• 13:50
  Oh, yes.
• 13:51
  Nancy May: But they're really good, or even sprinkling it on top of ice cream,
• 13:55
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, yeah.
• 13:55
  Yeah,
• 13:57
  Nancy May: or do it as a mix in for ice cream.
• 13:58
  So those are some traditions to get rid of the, sweet old foods
• 14:02
  that you become really hard.
• 14:04
  Sylvia Lovely: I am so into conserving where you can, It just seems right.
• 14:08
  If you go through the trouble of making a gingerbread house, then
• 14:11
  you should use it in various ways.
• 14:14
  Or a turkey carcass,
• 14:16
  Nancy May: right, right, or maybe you watch the, Godzilla Smashing Houses
• 14:19
  and you can play your inner Godzilla
• 14:21
  Sylvia Lovely: I guess.
• 14:22
  Well, what do you do with the Christmas tree?
• 14:23
  I want your answer on that one.
• 14:25
  Nancy May: Oh, the Christmas tree.
• 14:26
  Well, we're going to do an episode on that 1, but, the Christmas tree.
• 14:29
  We used to burn the Christmas tree.
• 14:30
  actually, the funny stories, our house, back north, we
• 14:34
  lived on the edge of a hill.
• 14:35
  So there's, there was a wall and then, you There was a hill on the other side
• 14:39
  and we would just toss our Christmas trees over the hill and Bob one day said,
• 14:44
  what are you going to do when I die?
• 14:45
  And I said, I'm just going to throw you over the hill with the Christmas trees.
• 14:52
  Sylvia Lovely: wherever you are.
• 14:54
  Nancy May: I don't think that should be a tradition.
• 14:56
  But anyway,
• 14:57
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, no, no, we need Bob to keep you under control.
• 15:02
  Nancy May: Watch out!
• 15:03
  Crazy lady in the kitchen!
• 15:04
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 15:06
  Nancy May: But we do, we, we got New Year's, we got healthy foods and all the
• 15:08
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, no.
• 15:10
  And I get really into that, by the way.
• 15:12
  I really do.
• 15:13
  I get, you know, I get into this spirit of, all right, I've let it
• 15:17
  slide now from about October on.
• 15:20
  But here's the big thing.
• 15:21
  You want to hear the big thing for 2025?
• 15:24
  Fermented foods.
• 15:25
  They're very good for you, and it's a variety of things, and I
• 15:29
  was trying my best to find why.
• 15:31
  Why are they so good for you?
• 15:33
  And all the stuff you read, it's like they release, enzymes, and my, a macro,
• 15:38
  You know, micro little, those little old guys, yeah, that live in your gut and
• 15:41
  stuff, supposed to be really good for you.
• 15:44
  And I still, I'm still wondering, okay, so they do all those
• 15:48
  things, but how does that happen?
• 15:50
  What is fermentation?
• 15:51
  And it's like all the other stuff, like aged anything releases enzymes, you
• 15:56
  pull out all the moisture out of all the water and you, and salt is one of the
• 16:01
  Nancy May: That kind of sounds like my last birthday.
• 16:03
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, but for some reason they're really good for you, and they
• 16:08
  restore what is missing in your gut.
• 16:11
  And there's more and more said about that.
• 16:13
  Yeah, more and more done about that.
• 16:14
  Nancy May: sourdough is fermented and that's a real big thing.
• 16:17
  And I've got a friend who gave me a bunch of sourdough bread the other day.
• 16:21
  She calls her bread Fred.
• 16:22
  I did a post on Instagram on that.
• 16:24
  So Fred the bread.
• 16:25
  Sylvia Lovely: I love sourdough by the way.
• 16:26
  It's so good.
• 16:27
  Nancy May: beyond being good for you.
• 16:29
  it's supposed to, be lower in gluten for those who are gluten
• 16:32
  Sylvia Lovely: that's right.
• 16:33
  And miso soup was another one of those.
• 16:35
  But, I was telling you I went down a rabbit hole looking at these things,
• 16:39
  like, how old can things be that you can still eat them, you know?
• 16:42
  Because I'm fascinated, I've always been fascinated by dry aged beef, You're
• 16:46
  not supposed to leave stuff out, right?
• 16:48
  And it goes bad.
• 16:49
  Well, this requires, an agent that pulls out all the moisture so it's dry aged.
• 16:55
  So, it's kept in a very refrigerated, situation where it's not like you just
• 16:59
  lay it out on the counter and call it dry aged beef, you'll die, right?
• 17:03
  Because it's bad.
• 17:04
  so you've got that, and then, eastern Kentucky smokehouses.
• 17:07
  I was always fascinated with those because my grandfather had a smokehouse, and in
• 17:11
  those smokehouses, it was usually a hog.
• 17:13
  That they bought in the summer, raised it, and slaughtered it in November, and that
• 17:17
  was what fed the family throughout their, wintertime in Kentucky, and that's cold.
• 17:22
  Miss Floridian, that's cold out
• 17:24
  Nancy May: Well, now I'm used to New England, Darlene.
• 17:27
  Sylvia Lovely: in the hills of eastern Kentucky, but they
• 17:29
  would, cure it with salt.
• 17:30
  you'd have that carcass and you'd rub it with salt several times.
• 17:34
  It was a serious undertaking, days long undertaking.
• 17:37
  And, you rub it down and then you kept it in the smokehouse and then put the meat
• 17:42
  up, hung it up, and that was country ham.
• 17:44
  And, country ham's pretty famous.
• 17:46
  It's very salty.
• 17:48
  And we were talking about what do you get, how do you get salt out of food.
• 17:52
  And,
• 17:53
  Nancy May: know, the Norwegian fish that they had, the
• 17:55
  salt fish, that's how they preserved it.
• 17:57
  But, and that's like generations of traditions on that front, but
• 18:01
  they soak it in milk and, soaking a whole ham in milk, that's, it
• 18:05
  seems like a waste of milk, right?
• 18:07
  Sylvia Lovely: They say to chop it up and put it in water.
• 18:09
  And there's a whole, process you go through where you keep doing
• 18:13
  that until it gets to the point.
• 18:15
  And sometimes people will just eat it.
• 18:17
  You've had an experience where it wasn't that fun, right?
• 18:19
  Nancy May: Yeah, no, when we were on college tour, I was looking for
• 18:23
  colleges and my folks, well, it's just like all families, they take their
• 18:26
  kids around to go look at different campuses and see if this is the one.
• 18:29
  We were coming back through Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg area, and my mom
• 18:33
  saw a ham I guess it is like the big, the
• 18:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, the big thing.
• 18:38
  It looks like a big old shoulder or
• 18:39
  something, you
• 18:40
  Nancy May: exactly.
• 18:40
  I,
• 18:41
  Sylvia Lovely: know.
• 18:42
  it's either their
• 18:42
  Nancy May: butt whatever it is, but it was a big piece of meat and
• 18:46
  it's covered in the linen cloth.
• 18:49
  It's all in a little sack and it said Virginia ham on it, whatever it was.
• 18:52
  And mom was so excited.
• 18:53
  She was going to bring it back home.
• 18:54
  We brought it back home to Massachusetts.
• 18:56
  And, she's trying to figure out how to cook this thing.
• 18:59
  And it was the nastiest piece of meat.
• 19:01
  We all agreed.
• 19:02
  it was hard.
• 19:03
  It was dry and we didn't know what to do.
• 19:05
  And then we were just, Like,
• 19:07
  Sylvia Lovely: Toss it down the hillside, right?
• 19:09
  Nancy May: yeah, with the Christmas trees.
• 19:10
  Absolutely, we should have done that.
• 19:12
  But it was pretty nasty.
• 19:14
  So, we were disappointed, unfortunately.
• 19:16
  Sylvia Lovely: City Ham.
• 19:17
  City Ham is the modern version.
• 19:19
  It's where they don't do, it's done in somewhat similar ways, but not only with
• 19:24
  salt, and it takes a lot shorter time.
• 19:26
  So it's a sweeter ham, like most of us Kentuckians will
• 19:30
  make clear we want City Ham.
• 19:32
  Nancy May: Now, do they actually label it Cityham when you buy it?
• 19:35
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, you can go in a restaurant, and I don't know that I've
• 19:37
  ever seen it labeled, but if you go to a restaurant, you can ask, is it City Ham?
• 19:41
  And they'll say yes, and because it's mostly that's what it is in a restaurant
• 19:46
  Nancy May: I wonder do they preserve it
• 19:47
  differently?
• 19:47
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, in a much compressed time.
• 19:50
  It takes a lot of time to preserve it through, to make it
• 19:52
  country ham, and it's very salty.
• 19:55
  So you do have to go through this process if you're a city fied
• 19:57
  person, and don't want to eat a lot of salt, or you have hypertension.
• 20:01
  I don't know.
• 20:02
  Back in the country, I don't think they worried about those things.
• 20:04
  They
• 20:04
  just
• 20:05
  Nancy May: I'm thinking, I'm thinking country and Kentucky and only
• 20:08
  driven through Kentucky once many years ago, never really stopping.
• 20:12
  Unfortunately, I should, I'll have to come and visit.
• 20:14
  So we'll,
• 20:14
  we'll
• 20:15
  Sylvia Lovely: of
• 20:15
  course you
• 20:15
  Nancy May: in for a while, but all I can think of is if you're going
• 20:18
  to eat that country ham, you better have a jigger of moonshine next
• 20:23
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, we can get that for you, too, that we can get you there.
• 20:26
  And just in the future as a 2025 resolution order Cityham,
• 20:32
  Nancy May: I will order city ham.
• 20:33
  I'll see if they even have it down here.
• 20:34
  I'll
• 20:35
  Sylvia Lovely: it made me think of, going through the hills of Kentucky, you might
• 20:38
  even find some roadkill along the way.
• 20:40
  So, you know, we're country folk here.
• 20:42
  No, there's a funny story though, in Williamsburg, Kentucky, there was
• 20:45
  a huge news story about a little.
• 20:47
  Vietnamese restaurant that had established itself there, and
• 20:51
  someone saw them take a deer off the road and take it in the back door.
• 20:56
  It was huge.
• 20:57
  It was a huge news story.
• 20:58
  Nancy May: yeah, we, saw something like that with turtles up
• 21:01
  north.
• 21:02
  Yeah, the big, well, I guess they're big, they're not box to those are small, but
• 21:06
  there was this big turtle and the joke was like, okay, the turtle disappeared because
• 21:10
  the Chinese restaurant and picked it up
• 21:12
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, well, you know, you have to be enterprising, right?
• 21:14
  But,
• 21:14
  you want to know what the oldest food that they have found?
• 21:17
  Now, there's some canned goods that were 109 years old that were still edible.
• 21:21
  Nancy May: well, I, I'm not sure I want to open that
• 21:24
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, they even said that it smelled bad, and it
• 21:27
  looked terrible, and they tasted it.
• 21:29
  And I'm like, why
• 21:30
  would you do that?
• 21:31
  Why would you even, ick?
• 21:33
  But anyway, honey, 3, 000 year old honey.
• 21:35
  Nancy May: well, the Egyptians used it to preserve bodies,
• 21:38
  right?
• 21:38
  so I guess,
• 21:40
  Sylvia Lovely: you live longer.
• 21:41
  Eat that honey.
• 21:42
  Nancy May: gosh, can you imagine?
• 21:45
  I wonder if the bees were different back then than they are now?
• 21:47
  Sylvia Lovely: Probably, I think everything is, but there are many
• 21:49
  things that are better today, Right?
• 21:51
  We're going to be optimists.
• 21:55
  Nancy May: that age that are good, well, you're in bourbon country, and then
• 21:58
  there's certainly red, good red wine, although you're in bourbon country,
• 22:02
  Sylvia Lovely: Bourbon country.
• 22:03
  That's all about age.
• 22:04
  And we're going to do that in a separate show.
• 22:06
  We're going to go about our way with bourbon.
• 22:08
  it'll be fun.
• 22:09
  Nancy May: I'm excited to learn about bourbon.
• 22:10
  It's not something that I've gotten involved in, but uh, you know what?
• 22:14
  Maybe there's a resolution to try a little bourbon in the new year.
• 22:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, they say it's great.
• 22:19
  Now I'm a wino.
• 22:20
  Nancy May: I'm a wino too.
• 22:21
  Although we've really gotten interested in the non alcoholic beers lately, my
• 22:25
  husband and I, Bob and I, and there's some really different between the tastes.
• 22:29
  I'm surprised at How broad the taste and the differences
• 22:32
  between from, O'Doul's to Miller.
• 22:36
  Sorry, sorry, Miller, but God, I might as well drink a glass of water.
• 22:39
  Sylvia Lovely: Really?
• 22:40
  Nancy May: It's really kind of
• 22:41
  Sylvia Lovely: That's like Miller Lite or something?
• 22:42
  Yeah.
• 22:43
  Nancy May: And then, uh, and then we found some others that were done by
• 22:46
  Trappist monks that were good, although I think they probably had alcohol
• 22:49
  in it, but that was pretty good too.
• 22:50
  Anyway, so New Year's resolution, maybe, if I'm not drinking wine or
• 22:56
  bourbon, It's the non alcoholic beer,
• 22:59
  which is growing.
• 23:00
  So there's a lot that's going to happen in 2025, and we hope that
• 23:04
  you're going to stick around for a long, a lot more time to go.
• 23:07
  But before we go, I have one more kind of thing, and it doesn't really necessarily
• 23:11
  deal with food, but the new year is kind of interesting, and always around
• 23:15
  March, I start to panic and thinking that the new year is over, I haven't gotten
• 23:20
  anything done, what am I going to do?
• 23:22
  It's March already!
• 23:23
  It's
• 23:23
  March already!
• 23:24
  So yeah,
• 23:25
  I'll try not to panic as a New Year's resolution.
• 23:28
  Sylvia Lovely: I love that.
• 23:29
  I'm going to adopt that one, too.
• 23:30
  Just take it slow and
• 23:32
  easy.
• 23:33
  Like
• 23:33
  your, uh, like your slow cooker, you know?
• 23:36
  It's a time to calm down, too.
• 23:38
  Nancy May: absolutely.
• 23:39
  And we actually want to make sure that people are taking the time to pull
• 23:43
  a chair up to your table and have a conversation and really enjoy that meal.
• 23:47
  Put down your cell phones.
• 23:48
  Well, maybe not if you're listening to the show, but
• 23:53
  listen
• 23:53
  Sylvia Lovely: Not always bad.
• 23:55
  Nancy May: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Yeah, but we do hope that you'll stick around and please share the
• 23:59
  show in this episode and your ideas and the things that you're doing with
• 24:03
  friends and family around the table, the traditions, the foods that you
• 24:06
  love and the stories, because what's a meal without a story, right?
• 24:11
  Because every recipe has a story and every story is a feast.
• 24:14
  Sylvia Lovely: There you go.
• 24:15
  Nancy May: Take care.
• 24:16
  Bye bye.