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Luck, Love, and Food: Bizarre Family Food Superstitions · Family Tree Food Stories

0:00
Nancy May: Hey there, it's Nancy and Sylvia from Family Tree Food and Stories.
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This is going to be a really interesting show and as we're getting on with the
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holidays, we thought, well, Sylvia and I thought, that it would be a good
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idea to talk about food superstitions.
0:16
Hey there everybody.
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It's Nancy and Sylvia from Family Tree Foods and Stories.
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This is going to be a really interesting show and one I think you're
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going to be fascinated on because quite honestly, we learned a lot
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in doing the research for this too.
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This one's about superstitions.
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Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.
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I'll let you take it on here, Sylvia.
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What do you think?
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Sylvia Lovely: well.
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you know, the Halloween season is kind of the gateway to the holiday season
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where we really get into, Everything, and particularly at Christmas time, we believe
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in elves and things like that, don't we?
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We believe in Santa Claus.
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Well, let's talk about superstitions.
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Why in the world do we do them?
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Why do we believe in them?
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Even very rational people won't walk under a ladder, do you, Nancy?
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Nancy May: No, I tend to actually walk around a ladder.
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Sylvia Lovely: I do , too, or the black cat thing, or, whatever.
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I mean, it's crossing your fingers.
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By the way, The scientists have proven that if you do that, cross your fingers,
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you're actually more confident and therefore you're more successful.
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Nancy May: you know how they say whether you cross your arms
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left to right and right to left?
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I wonder, can you cross your fingers directions?
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I'm trying right now and it doesn't quite work.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Just do it.
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That's, the bottom line.
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Okay.
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So the reason we have superstitions is that we need to believe
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in something bigger than us.
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I mean, there's a lot of natural phenomenon.
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And all of us somewhere in the back of our mind believe that there's some kind
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of reason that weird things happen.
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Well, From generations and generations ago, food became one of the primary
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reasons we had superstitions.
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Why?
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food is universal, So people would build up superstitions around food because
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they needed that traditional, flow of superstitions through their generations.
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Every family has them.
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And so that is the basis for why we have superstitions.
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So what are some of them, Nancy?
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Nancy May: Oh, my goodness.
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There's so many.
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they even start back ancient times , you lot of religion
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built around superstitions.
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But I've got a few that I think are really interesting.
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We've done some research, just those who are listening, looking at it
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from an international perspective, And one that caught my attention
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was cutting noodles in China.
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you cut noodles, it's considered you're actually cutting somebody's life short.
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I'm thinking, oh my goodness, what happens with those really long spaghetti right?
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I, I love those actually.
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I, don't cut my noodles.
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Sylvia Lovely: Hey, Nancy, can I ask you a question noodles?
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In Japan, it is well known that you go to a noodle shop, you slurp your entire
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noodle, and you make a lot of noise They don't cut them, but you just, you
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get a bowl of noodles, and you slurp the whole thing, and you make loud too.
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I don't think that's a superstition, but it's kind of related,
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Nancy May: I would consider it more of an etiquette issue, not a superstition issue.
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Sylvia Lovely: I remember it was awkward.
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Nancy May: I've got anotherr one, and actually this is one that my mom
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believed in and her mom used to talk about, I guess, with her as a young girl.
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My mom's mom passed away, I think it was about 10 days after I was born.
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I don't remember, obviously.
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But, her mom passed shortly after I was born, and then her father passed
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about five months after I was born.
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So that was a lot of difficult time, I think, for my mom.
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But superstitions, she always said that her mother was very superstitious
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and she had all sorts of British things because they came UK.
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But one that we even practiced in our house was, how do you peel an apple?
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Well, you peel an apple with knife and you keep peeling it and hopefully
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you get that one whole peel.
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But the super sedition was apparently started in Victorian England where I call
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it the hocus pocus voodoo goddess out there, whoever she is, was saying that if
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you peeled the apple and it fell on your table, which is what you wanted to do.
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You would see the first initial of your future lover.
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Well, what happens if you peel a dozen apples for a pie?
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You never know.
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Oh, that's so
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Yeah, what happens if more than one letter?
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh that's so interesting this is a related kind of story,
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but I remember one time my father was telling us ghost stories.
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And I remember just being scared to death.
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at that time we had an outdoor freezer.
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And my mother and I, I wouldn't go out by myself.
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I think she wanted me to get a loaf of bread or something.
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and I said, I'm not going to go by myself.
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I'm kind of spooked a little bit.
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dad just told these stories.
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Well, she and I both go and we're in the middle of the garage, dark garage,
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and there's the freezer ahead of us.
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And all of a sudden, outside of the garage, I hear, Ooooooooh, Ooooooooh.
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I don't know if you ever have been that scared where you were
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speechless and you couldn't move.
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You couldn't scream, you couldn't do anything, and we just froze
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and holding on to each other.
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And there my dad came around the corner of the garage and started just laughing
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his head like I'm gonna kill you.
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Anyway, a little bit related to superstition.
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Nancy May: my, folks never tried to scare us that way.
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Although, there's one on watermelon seeds.
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And watermelon seeds, they say, this is a Turkish superstition.
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If you swallow a watermelon seed, that's going to make you infertile.
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Well, if you're talking about kids eating watermelon seeds or swallowing them,
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you don't talk about that necessarily.
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But I remember as a young child, I couldn't have been probably
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more than seven years old.
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My parents had a big cocktail party and they were known for
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having some really good parties.
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At least that's what they said.
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So I believe So one of my parents friends was sitting and they, it was
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in the summertime on a side porch,
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And I came down just before I went to bed and I'm wearing a nightgown
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that is pink with little flowers and little green leaves on it.
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And everybody had watermelon for dessert.
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So he asked me if I swallowed the watermelon seed and I didn't say anything.
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And he says, I know you swallowed it because I can see it.
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It's growing inside you right now.
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I can see pink and the green.
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that guy scared the living daylights out of me.
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mom had to actually bring him back the next day to tell me that it wasn't
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Sylvia Lovely: to tell you.
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Oh, no, I heard that, too.
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about watermelon seeds.
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Hey, you want to hear one in Italy?
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That's really good one.
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Okay, All right, here we go.
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In a small town in Italy on the last day of Lent, you're supposed to eat homemade
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pasta, covered with sauce and horseradish.
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You take a mouthful.
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You position yourself next to a wall so that you see your shadow.
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You begin to chew.
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If you see your mouth moving in the shadow, It means you'll live another year.
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And if you don't, well, it was great knowing you.
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So just be careful about that pasta.
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There's a lot of pasta ones.
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Nancy May: Well, I guess you have yourself so you actually
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do see the shadow moving, right?
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That's a thing
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Sylvia Lovely: I think if you're smart,
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Nancy May: I'd find some around that one.
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There's one.
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about in your pocket in France.
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carrying eggshells in your pocket wards off bad spirits.
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And, I thought garlic was the deal with, the whole boarding spirits, the evil
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and the, whatever that the bad guys, the devil, but eggshells in your pocket.
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All I can think is.
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Well, if the eggshells aren't clean and they're sitting in your pocket,
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they're going to stink after a while, so I think you would ward off a lot more
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than just bad spirits and leave to the Sorry, if you're french and listening.
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Sylvia Lovely: yeah, well, that may be the case with garlic, too.
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Yeah, that's true.
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Hey, think about bananas, that's the all American yummy, isn't it?
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Even if we get them from other places.
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But, think about bananas, and there is that superstition surrounding bananas.
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and I found that, and I couldn't remember, and you remember why, right?
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Now, there are boaters to this day who will not allow bananas On their boat.
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I would be shocked if I heard that, but now I know why.
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Right.
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Nancy May: So, bananas have been a bad luck symbol for many sailors
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over the years, and it all stems back because the bananas originally came
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from Brazil, and there was typically hitchhiking along the way, and A
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particularly venomous or venom venomous, I'm not gonna get that word out right.
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Spider.
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That right?
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Yeah.
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You say that three times fast.
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But apparently this spider, which is called the Brazilian wandering
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spider, is extremely dead.
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Deadly though.
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It's dead too.
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But it's deadly
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Maybe the spider got my tongue as opposed to the cat.
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Got my tongue
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so.
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But if you're out in the water and you're on a boat and you're
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hauling your bananas back to shore or to another country, guess what?
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You get bitten by the spider.
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You're like, S.
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O.
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L.
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See you later,
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Charlie.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Or it was great
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Nancy May: That's right.
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No, ditto.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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You know, eggshells are big.
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'cause I guess eggs are symbolic of the future.
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So, a lot of egg stuff.
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Eggshells in soil.
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Helps the soil grow vegetables and things like that.
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so that's good.
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Bread, you know.
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Holes in bread is bad luck.
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Holes in your bread.
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Now, I don't know how big they have to be, because, you know, some bread is real
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Nancy May: I like the in bread They're like airy and puffy and
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like a really good baguette that has
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Sylvia Lovely: know, Nancy, watch it.
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Just watch it, okay?
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Nancy May: more room for the butter to sit as far as I'm
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concerned.
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I know.
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I like the crusty parts, but I don't think they have any
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superstitions, affiliated with them.
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So, there you go.
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Let's take a quick break.
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Nancy May: So, back to the whole thing on superstitions, and we're kind of
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superstitious, I would say, or at least I'm superstitious, so we, I think,
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we all have a little bit anyway, We want to certainly make sure our book
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does well, so I wonder if there's any superstition around food and books.
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But, I certainly know there some on whiskey and fish, I love our fishermen
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because there's so much food related tradition with the old fishermen of the
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day, and whiskey, in the Scottish terms, of the Scottish fishermen, apparently
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has some
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Sylvia Lovely: goes together, by the way.
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and
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Nancy May: of course, of course,
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Sylvia Lovely: I'm Scotch Irish, by the way.
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I would know,
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Nancy May: Well, there's a little Scot me somewhere, and there's certainly
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a bottle of Scotch in the pantry, so I guess that's good luck too.
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But the Scottish fishermen when they come back from their fishing trips,
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they would tend to their, to their nets and they would repair them.
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But if a friend came by to visit while they were repairing their nets, they would
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give that friend money to go get whiskey.
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And they weren't supposed to drink it well, I don't know how many people
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didn't drink it on the way back.
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But even more important when they were done, the Scottish fishermen
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could not drink the whiskey till they were done with their chores.
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Well, I kind of think I know why, and that's supposed to bring better luck
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or good luck is drinking at the end of the Finishing tying up Well, as
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opposed to drunken nets while fishing.
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Sylvia Lovely: There you go.
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you know, some science that's been, performed.
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This is interesting, because it says, Are Animals Superstitious?
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And if you think about it, they've done some experiments
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with pigeons, but here's the deal.
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The pigeon saw that something happened and started avoiding an area or something.
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Or a dog avoids an area.
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Is that superstition or just because you figured it out?
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And that may be how superstition started to begin with.
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As you think about it, something happened as a result of something
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being done, like the banana story.
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And superstition is just something that lived on and on.
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It was a way of human storytelling.
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There you go.
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just like in our book, people have stories and the stories take on life forms.
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I've heard that about cookies.
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My cookies have special meaning.
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I do cookies of a certain kind at Christmas.
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And if I don't, you know, the world will fall apart kind of I, I don't know.
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It's, it's just, I think they grow.
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I think they grow organically over the generations.
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Nancy May: think you're right.
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and you know what, superstitions can be actually kind of fun and
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they make us laugh for sure.
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There was one that I actually found really kind of funny.
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back to our friend Leo, who we will have on the show too.
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But, Leo has.
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At least one or two tarantulas and I wanna cuddle up to, but it's Leo.
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It's okay.
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And I found that there is a good luck superstition in the UK.
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They're kind of strange a lot, I should say,
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times
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, sit around those spires with a pint, you know,
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I think it had something to do
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with probably.
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In their pubs.
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Nancy May: But this one was, if you find a spider in your drink, that
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means that there is money coming.
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I have never found a spider in my drink.
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Sylvia Lovely: No, and I No,
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Nancy May: but if it meant money, maybe I, maybe I'll plant the spider.
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Sylvia Lovely: And I'm never spending a night in Leo's guest
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Oh, heck no, absolutely not.
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Nancy May: I may sure never make it to Kentucky either, as a result.
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Sorry.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I know a tarant is on the run.
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Uh, so yeah.
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Hey, tea has a huge superstition about it.
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all kinds of things.
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And I think you mentioned tea leaves.
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I don't know if it's because tea is so rooted in history.
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but tea has always been part of culture and, spiritual kinds of gatherings
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around tea, high tea in the afternoon.
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And, you know, that's a, what, a British kind of, kind of thing.
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I went to a tea just
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the other day with a friend of mine
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Nancy May: it's a new thing to do again.
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For years, in New York, I would have my friends, girlfriends,
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we'd meet at the end of the day.
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we'd take special afternoons every now and then.
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We'd go meet for tea the Carlisle or the Waldorf or the Pierre or someplace fancy.
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but somehow you feel so much more regal when you're having high tea.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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And it usually has, like, these little tiny sandwiches associated with it.
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Like little, um, oh, I don't know, cucumber sandwiches, little
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tiny things, little cookies, you know, are usually there.
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But, there's some things you gotta know about tea, Nancy, before you
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go to another one of those parties.
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Okay, you can't pour two cups from the same pot.
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Nancy May: Excuse me, really,
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Sylvia Lovely: I don't think people follow that, yeah, that's bad luck.
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let's see, I know there is another one that says, don't give knives as gifts.
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Nancy May: I know but you can give a knife as a gift if you put penny in it.
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The penny supposed to get red of the bad luck.
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I had an uncle who gave my husband and I, some steak knives for our
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wedding, and he put a penny in it.
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I think I would have appreciated a dollar, but worked too.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, well, you know, inflation.
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Well, knife?
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Okay, I don't get that, but
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the package with the knife.
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Nancy May: But, but
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let's get back to the tea, because I
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think, I'm not sure where tea originally started from.
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it's been kind of ubiquitous around the world.
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But again, sort of years back, a friend of mine who had been a former airline
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stewardess, and she believed in reading tea leaves and all that sort of stuff.
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Mediums and whatnot.
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She says, you have to go see this little old lady in Stamford, Connecticut.
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And I thought, I don't have to see this old lady.
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She little old Irish And I said, okay, I'm going to go Charlotte, I
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will go and I'll go check it out.
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So I went, I made an appointment with her and She was your
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stereotypical little old Irish lady.
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She was tiny.
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She was probably about 4'7
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She had this irish brogue, which I cannot do.
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And she asked me if I'd ever done this before.
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And I said, no, I hadn't done this before.
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I took off earrings.
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I took off rings.
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I took off anything that would I could.
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Give her any kind of hint of who I was.
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And she read tea leaves.
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And I said, well, how does this work?
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She goes, dear, you just sit here in the front and relax and I'll make some tea
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and you come into my kitchen, you drink the tea and I read the leaves for you.
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And I said, okay.
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And she's reading these leaves, I drink the tea.
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And I think I should drink this really fast because I
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don't know what to say to her.
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She's supposed to be figuring this out.
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but it, darn, if she didn't know certain things that I,
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there was no way she would know.
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She knew an old boyfriend's name.
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She knew the relationship I had current fiance.
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She knew my going on a trip and where they were going.
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She knew their names.
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It these strange little She didn't predict anything.
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But other than telling me a little bit about the relationships, floored.
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kind of
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would like to gone back to her again, but I think she had
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to be in her 90s at the time
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anyway.
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and that was a long time ago.
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Sylvia Lovely: I think that's another reason for superstitions, that there
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are strange phenomena in the world.
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Things that we can't possibly explain.
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the other day I was reading in the newspaper, a woman had lost
18:05
her daughter in a plane crash.
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And her name was like Simra or something.
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sometime afterwards, a butterfly attached itself to her cousin
18:14
and they took a picture of it.
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It was beautiful.
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And later somebody wrote them a note and said they had researched that butterfly.
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And it's name was Sim, it's like simra, was the type, of butterfly
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was called the same thing her daughter's name was I mean, that
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just made chills go up and down.
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It was a very comforting thing for her, because, sort of symbolized
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to her, or was a sign that her daughter was fine, was okay.
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mean, is that just eerie though phenomena We don't things.
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It's just stuff that happens, and that's how superstitions are born,
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and that's how family traditions and the generations that appreciate each
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other, and that's what we're doing, Nancy, with our book, you know, let's
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appreciate all that's gone before and bring that all together in stories,
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because they're just wonderful stories.
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That was a
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Nancy May: It was.
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and, And bring so much meaning to our lives, especially when there's
19:12
so much turmoil in the world.
19:14
And nothing better than sitting down at a table and breaking bread with
19:19
somebody that you like and care about.
19:21
And hopefully love, So, birthday birthday cakes actually are originated
19:28
back to the ancient Greek times, where the Greeks created round
19:32
cakes in honor of the moon Artemis.
19:35
And when you blew out the candles, that they put on the cakes, candles
19:39
were there as prayers to the gods But the smoke was apparently the, the way
19:45
that the prayer got up to the gods.
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So that's kind interesting.
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So as you blow out candles, you think about, we say,
19:53
that's, you know, blow the candles and make a wish.
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Well, maybe, Blow the candles and now you're speaking to the goddess
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, that makes it so noble.
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Hey, New Year's Eve, tons of them, eating grapes, all kinds
20:04
of black eyed peas, things
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that, you know, my son would try to hide the black eyed peas cause his
20:09
grandmother would want him to eat them, and she would stand over him and make
20:13
him eat one pea and watch him as he did.
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So, there's a lot of New Year's Eve stuff.
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Nancy May: So, there are a lot of traditions around New Year's Eve.
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Like you said, the black peas and certainly drinking champagne,
20:26
kissing, and a few other things.
20:28
New Year's is,
20:29
the start of something fresh.
20:31
And we're at the start of something fresh with Family Tree Food and
20:34
Stories, which is really exciting.
20:36
So we want to thank you for being here.
20:39
We also want to invite you to buy our book called Family Tree Food and Stories.
20:44
That's going to be available on Amazon.
20:47
And if you want to get a lot more information from us, including
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a special gift, go to Book Dot FamilyTreeFoodStories Dot com.
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com.
20:56
There'll be a lot more that you can get there, and we'll keep you up
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to date on future episodes, plus other gifts that we're giving away.
21:02
As well, And, as we say,
21:04
Every meal is a story, and every story is a feast.
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We'll see you soon, or, Bye!
21:11
We'll hear you soon, or better yet,
21:13
we'll see you at the table.
21:14
Take care.
21:15
bye.