Hey there, it's Nancy and Sylvia from Family Tree Food and Stories.

This is going to be a really interesting show and as we're getting on with the

holidays, we thought, well, Sylvia and I thought, that it would be a good

idea to talk about food superstitions.

Hey there everybody.

It's Nancy and Sylvia from Family Tree Foods and Stories.

This is going to be a really interesting show and one I think you're

going to be fascinated on because quite honestly, we learned a lot

in doing the research for this too.

This one's about superstitions.

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

I'll let you take it on here, Sylvia.

What do you think?

well.

you know, the Halloween season is kind of the gateway to the holiday season

where we really get into, Everything, and particularly at Christmas time, we believe

in elves and things like that, don't we?

We believe in Santa Claus.

Well, let's talk about superstitions.

Why in the world do we do them?

Why do we believe in them?

Even very rational people won't walk under a ladder, do you, Nancy?

No, I tend to actually walk around a ladder.

I do , too, or the black cat thing, or, whatever.

I mean, it's crossing your fingers.

By the way, The scientists have proven that if you do that, cross your fingers,

you're actually more confident and therefore you're more successful.

you know how they say whether you cross your arms

left to right and right to left?

I wonder, can you cross your fingers directions?

I'm trying right now and it doesn't quite work.

Yeah.

Just do it.

That's, the bottom line.

Okay.

So the reason we have superstitions is that we need to believe

in something bigger than us.

I mean, there's a lot of natural phenomenon.

And all of us somewhere in the back of our mind believe that there's some kind

of reason that weird things happen.

Well, From generations and generations ago, food became one of the primary

reasons we had superstitions.

Why?

food is universal, So people would build up superstitions around food because

they needed that traditional, flow of superstitions through their generations.

Every family has them.

And so that is the basis for why we have superstitions.

So what are some of them, Nancy?

Oh, my goodness.

There's so many.

they even start back ancient times , you lot of religion

built around superstitions.

But I've got a few that I think are really interesting.

We've done some research, just those who are listening, looking at it

from an international perspective, And one that caught my attention

was cutting noodles in China.

you cut noodles, it's considered you're actually cutting somebody's life short.

I'm thinking, oh my goodness, what happens with those really long spaghetti right?

I, I love those actually.

I, don't cut my noodles.

Hey, Nancy, can I ask you a question noodles?

In Japan, it is well known that you go to a noodle shop, you slurp your entire

noodle, and you make a lot of noise They don't cut them, but you just, you

get a bowl of noodles, and you slurp the whole thing, and you make loud too.

I don't think that's a superstition, but it's kind of related,

I would consider it more of an etiquette issue, not a superstition issue.

I remember it was awkward.

I've got anotherr one, and actually this is one that my mom

believed in and her mom used to talk about, I guess, with her as a young girl.

My mom's mom passed away, I think it was about 10 days after I was born.

I don't remember, obviously.

But, her mom passed shortly after I was born, and then her father passed

about five months after I was born.

So that was a lot of difficult time, I think, for my mom.

But superstitions, she always said that her mother was very superstitious

and she had all sorts of British things because they came UK.

But one that we even practiced in our house was, how do you peel an apple?

Well, you peel an apple with knife and you keep peeling it and hopefully

you get that one whole peel.

But the super sedition was apparently started in Victorian England where I call

it the hocus pocus voodoo goddess out there, whoever she is, was saying that if

you peeled the apple and it fell on your table, which is what you wanted to do.

You would see the first initial of your future lover.

Well, what happens if you peel a dozen apples for a pie?

You never know.

Oh, that's so

Yeah, what happens if more than one letter?

Oh that's so interesting this is a related kind of story,

but I remember one time my father was telling us ghost stories.

And I remember just being scared to death.

at that time we had an outdoor freezer.

And my mother and I, I wouldn't go out by myself.

I think she wanted me to get a loaf of bread or something.

and I said, I'm not going to go by myself.

I'm kind of spooked a little bit.

dad just told these stories.

Well, she and I both go and we're in the middle of the garage, dark garage,

and there's the freezer ahead of us.

And all of a sudden, outside of the garage, I hear, Ooooooooh, Ooooooooh.

I don't know if you ever have been that scared where you were

speechless and you couldn't move.

You couldn't scream, you couldn't do anything, and we just froze

and holding on to each other.

And there my dad came around the corner of the garage and started just laughing

his head like I'm gonna kill you.

Anyway, a little bit related to superstition.

my, folks never tried to scare us that way.

Although, there's one on watermelon seeds.

And watermelon seeds, they say, this is a Turkish superstition.

If you swallow a watermelon seed, that's going to make you infertile.

Well, if you're talking about kids eating watermelon seeds or swallowing them,

you don't talk about that necessarily.

But I remember as a young child, I couldn't have been probably

more than seven years old.

My parents had a big cocktail party and they were known for

having some really good parties.

At least that's what they said.

So I believe So one of my parents friends was sitting and they, it was

in the summertime on a side porch,

And I came down just before I went to bed and I'm wearing a nightgown

that is pink with little flowers and little green leaves on it.

And everybody had watermelon for dessert.

So he asked me if I swallowed the watermelon seed and I didn't say anything.

And he says, I know you swallowed it because I can see it.

It's growing inside you right now.

I can see pink and the green.

that guy scared the living daylights out of me.

mom had to actually bring him back the next day to tell me that it wasn't

to tell you.

Oh, no, I heard that, too.

about watermelon seeds.

Hey, you want to hear one in Italy?

That's really good one.

Okay, All right, here we go.

In a small town in Italy on the last day of Lent, you're supposed to eat homemade

pasta, covered with sauce and horseradish.

You take a mouthful.

You position yourself next to a wall so that you see your shadow.

You begin to chew.

If you see your mouth moving in the shadow, It means you'll live another year.

And if you don't, well, it was great knowing you.

So just be careful about that pasta.

There's a lot of pasta ones.

Well, I guess you have yourself so you actually

do see the shadow moving, right?

That's a thing

I think if you're smart,

I'd find some around that one.

There's one.

about in your pocket in France.

carrying eggshells in your pocket wards off bad spirits.

And, I thought garlic was the deal with, the whole boarding spirits, the evil

and the, whatever that the bad guys, the devil, but eggshells in your pocket.

All I can think is.

Well, if the eggshells aren't clean and they're sitting in your pocket,

they're going to stink after a while, so I think you would ward off a lot more

than just bad spirits and leave to the Sorry, if you're french and listening.

yeah, well, that may be the case with garlic, too.

Yeah, that's true.

Hey, think about bananas, that's the all American yummy, isn't it?

Even if we get them from other places.

But, think about bananas, and there is that superstition surrounding bananas.

and I found that, and I couldn't remember, and you remember why, right?

Now, there are boaters to this day who will not allow bananas On their boat.

I would be shocked if I heard that, but now I know why.

Right.

So, bananas have been a bad luck symbol for many sailors

over the years, and it all stems back because the bananas originally came

from Brazil, and there was typically hitchhiking along the way, and A

particularly venomous or venom venomous, I'm not gonna get that word out right.

Spider.

That right?

Yeah.

You say that three times fast.

But apparently this spider, which is called the Brazilian wandering

spider, is extremely dead.

Deadly though.

It's dead too.

But it's deadly

Maybe the spider got my tongue as opposed to the cat.

Got my tongue

so.

But if you're out in the water and you're on a boat and you're

hauling your bananas back to shore or to another country, guess what?

You get bitten by the spider.

You're like, S.

O.

L.

See you later,

Charlie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or it was great

That's right.

No, ditto.

Yeah.

You know, eggshells are big.

'cause I guess eggs are symbolic of the future.

So, a lot of egg stuff.

Eggshells in soil.

Helps the soil grow vegetables and things like that.

so that's good.

Bread, you know.

Holes in bread is bad luck.

Holes in your bread.

Now, I don't know how big they have to be, because, you know, some bread is real

I like the in bread They're like airy and puffy and

like a really good baguette that has

know, Nancy, watch it.

Just watch it, okay?

more room for the butter to sit as far as I'm

concerned.

Oh, I know.

I like the crusty parts, but I don't think they have any

superstitions, affiliated with them.

So, there you go.

Let's take a quick break.

So, back to the whole thing on superstitions, and we're kind of

superstitious, I would say, or at least I'm superstitious, so we, I think,

we all have a little bit anyway, We want to certainly make sure our book

does well, so I wonder if there's any superstition around food and books.

But, I certainly know there some on whiskey and fish, I love our fishermen

because there's so much food related tradition with the old fishermen of the

day, and whiskey, in the Scottish terms, of the Scottish fishermen, apparently

has some

goes together, by the way.

and

of course, of course,

I'm Scotch Irish, by the way.

I would know,

Well, there's a little Scot me somewhere, and there's certainly

a bottle of Scotch in the pantry, so I guess that's good luck too.

But the Scottish fishermen when they come back from their fishing trips,

they would tend to their, to their nets and they would repair them.

But if a friend came by to visit while they were repairing their nets, they would

give that friend money to go get whiskey.

And they weren't supposed to drink it well, I don't know how many people

didn't drink it on the way back.

But even more important when they were done, the Scottish fishermen

could not drink the whiskey till they were done with their chores.

Well, I kind of think I know why, and that's supposed to bring better luck

or good luck is drinking at the end of the Finishing tying up Well, as

opposed to drunken nets while fishing.

There you go.

you know, some science that's been, performed.

This is interesting, because it says, Are Animals Superstitious?

And if you think about it, they've done some experiments

with pigeons, but here's the deal.

The pigeon saw that something happened and started avoiding an area or something.

Or a dog avoids an area.

Is that superstition or just because you figured it out?

And that may be how superstition started to begin with.

As you think about it, something happened as a result of something

being done, like the banana story.

And superstition is just something that lived on and on.

It was a way of human storytelling.

There you go.

just like in our book, people have stories and the stories take on life forms.

I've heard that about cookies.

My cookies have special meaning.

I do cookies of a certain kind at Christmas.

And if I don't, you know, the world will fall apart kind of I, I don't know.

It's, it's just, I think they grow.

I think they grow organically over the generations.

think you're right.

and you know what, superstitions can be actually kind of fun and

they make us laugh for sure.

There was one that I actually found really kind of funny.

back to our friend Leo, who we will have on the show too.

But, Leo has.

At least one or two tarantulas and I wanna cuddle up to, but it's Leo.

It's okay.

And I found that there is a good luck superstition in the UK.

They're kind of strange a lot, I should say,

times

Yeah, sit around those spires with a pint, you know,

I think it had something to do

with probably.

In their pubs.

But this one was, if you find a spider in your drink, that

means that there is money coming.

I have never found a spider in my drink.

No, and I No,

but if it meant money, maybe I, maybe I'll plant the spider.

And I'm never spending a night in Leo's guest

Oh, heck no, absolutely not.

I may sure never make it to Kentucky either, as a result.

Sorry.

Yeah, I know a tarant is on the run.

Uh, so yeah.

Hey, tea has a huge superstition about it.

all kinds of things.

And I think you mentioned tea leaves.

I don't know if it's because tea is so rooted in history.

but tea has always been part of culture and, spiritual kinds of gatherings

around tea, high tea in the afternoon.

And, you know, that's a, what, a British kind of, kind of thing.

I went to a tea just

the other day with a friend of mine

it's a new thing to do again.

For years, in New York, I would have my friends, girlfriends,

we'd meet at the end of the day.

we'd take special afternoons every now and then.

We'd go meet for tea the Carlisle or the Waldorf or the Pierre or someplace fancy.

but somehow you feel so much more regal when you're having high tea.

Yeah.

And it usually has, like, these little tiny sandwiches associated with it.

Like little, um, oh, I don't know, cucumber sandwiches, little

tiny things, little cookies, you know, are usually there.

But, there's some things you gotta know about tea, Nancy, before you

go to another one of those parties.

Okay, you can't pour two cups from the same pot.

Excuse me, really,

I don't think people follow that, yeah, that's bad luck.

let's see, I know there is another one that says, don't give knives as gifts.

I know but you can give a knife as a gift if you put penny in it.

The penny supposed to get red of the bad luck.

I had an uncle who gave my husband and I, some steak knives for our

wedding, and he put a penny in it.

I think I would have appreciated a dollar, but worked too.

Yeah, well, you know, inflation.

Well, knife?

Okay, I don't get that, but

the package with the knife.

But, but

let's get back to the tea, because I

think, I'm not sure where tea originally started from.

it's been kind of ubiquitous around the world.

But again, sort of years back, a friend of mine who had been a former airline

stewardess, and she believed in reading tea leaves and all that sort of stuff.

Mediums and whatnot.

She says, you have to go see this little old lady in Stamford, Connecticut.

And I thought, I don't have to see this old lady.

She little old Irish And I said, okay, I'm going to go Charlotte, I

will go and I'll go check it out.

So I went, I made an appointment with her and She was your

stereotypical little old Irish lady.

She was tiny.

She was probably about 4'7

She had this irish brogue, which I cannot do.

And she asked me if I'd ever done this before.

And I said, no, I hadn't done this before.

I took off earrings.

I took off rings.

I took off anything that would I could.

Give her any kind of hint of who I was.

And she read tea leaves.

And I said, well, how does this work?

She goes, dear, you just sit here in the front and relax and I'll make some tea

and you come into my kitchen, you drink the tea and I read the leaves for you.

And I said, okay.

And she's reading these leaves, I drink the tea.

And I think I should drink this really fast because I

don't know what to say to her.

She's supposed to be figuring this out.

but it, darn, if she didn't know certain things that I,

there was no way she would know.

She knew an old boyfriend's name.

She knew the relationship I had current fiance.

She knew my going on a trip and where they were going.

She knew their names.

It these strange little She didn't predict anything.

But other than telling me a little bit about the relationships, floored.

kind of

would like to gone back to her again, but I think she had

to be in her 90s at the time

anyway.

and that was a long time ago.

I think that's another reason for superstitions, that there

are strange phenomena in the world.

Things that we can't possibly explain.

the other day I was reading in the newspaper, a woman had lost

her daughter in a plane crash.

And her name was like Simra or something.

sometime afterwards, a butterfly attached itself to her cousin

and they took a picture of it.

It was beautiful.

And later somebody wrote them a note and said they had researched that butterfly.

And it's name was Sim, it's like simra, was the type, of butterfly

was called the same thing her daughter's name was I mean, that

just made chills go up and down.

It was a very comforting thing for her, because, sort of symbolized

to her, or was a sign that her daughter was fine, was okay.

mean, is that just eerie though phenomena We don't things.

It's just stuff that happens, and that's how superstitions are born,

and that's how family traditions and the generations that appreciate each

other, and that's what we're doing, Nancy, with our book, you know, let's

appreciate all that's gone before and bring that all together in stories,

because they're just wonderful stories.

That was a

It was.

and, And bring so much meaning to our lives, especially when there's

so much turmoil in the world.

And nothing better than sitting down at a table and breaking bread with

somebody that you like and care about.

And hopefully love, So, birthday birthday cakes actually are originated

back to the ancient Greek times, where the Greeks created round

cakes in honor of the moon Artemis.

And when you blew out the candles, that they put on the cakes, candles

were there as prayers to the gods But the smoke was apparently the, the way

that the prayer got up to the gods.

So that's kind interesting.

So as you blow out candles, you think about, we say,

that's, you know, blow the candles and make a wish.

Well, maybe, Blow the candles and now you're speaking to the goddess

Oh, that makes it so noble.

Hey, New Year's Eve, tons of them, eating grapes, all kinds

of black eyed peas, things

that, you know, my son would try to hide the black eyed peas cause his

grandmother would want him to eat them, and she would stand over him and make

him eat one pea and watch him as he did.

So, there's a lot of New Year's Eve stuff.

So, there are a lot of traditions around New Year's Eve.

Like you said, the black peas and certainly drinking champagne,

kissing, and a few other things.

New Year's is,

the start of something fresh.

And we're at the start of something fresh with Family Tree Food and

Stories, which is really exciting.

So we want to thank you for being here.

We also want to invite you to buy our book called Family Tree Food and Stories.

That's going to be available on Amazon.

And if you want to get a lot more information from us, including

a special gift, go to Book Dot FamilyTreeFoodStories Dot com.

com.

There'll be a lot more that you can get there, and we'll keep you up

to date on future episodes, plus other gifts that we're giving away.

As well, And, as we say,

Every meal is a story, and every story is a feast.

We'll see you soon, or, Bye!

We'll hear you soon, or better yet,

we'll see you at the table.

Take care.

bye.