St. Patrick's Day Traditions: Drowning Shamrocks, Smart Salmon, and TikTok Trends.

Could your next St. Paddy's family food tradition include drowning a shamrock?

Stay tuned, there's a lot more in store on this one, with a little

look of the Irish on your side too.

Hey there food lovers and history buffs, I'm Nancy Mae.

And I'm Sylvia Lovely.

Welcome to Family Tree Food and Stories.

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to our St. Patrick's Day special.

You know, this is kind of an interesting day.

I don't know too much about St. Patrick's Day in general, except

those things that I don't know you by use Sylvie, but everything was

green as a kid and everybody's last name started with O, so Nancy Oay.

Right?

. Sylvia O. Lovely.

I am Irish, however, but Well, it kind of like O Lovely because it,

that sounds a little bit Oh yeah.

Lovelier.

. Oh, so lovely.

Oh, so lovely.

Yeah.

Ireland has an allure to it.

Of course.

I'm Irish.

Scott's Irish.

That's who settled in this area, particularly in Eastern Kentucky.

We're all, if you trace back our roots, it's all Ireland.

And you know, I was in Dublin several years ago.

Now I'm going to be insulting to some group of people, I'm

sure here, but I'm one of them.

Okay.

I was born in Eastern Kentucky.

But I went there and every, particularly the little old men,

were round with those little hats on top, looked just like my dad.

And we tend to be round in Eastern Kentucky.

And some people are pear shaped, some are other things.

But we're round, which means we have to fight weight gain.

And my nutrition theory is that the potato famine, we starved in Ireland,

and when we came over here, Any morsel of food you eat then adds weight to you.

That's my nutrition advice out there.

Don't starve yourself.

Don't go on yo yo diets.

Well, it probably is.

I've been on a yo yo diet all my life.

It started when Tab first came out.

Uh huh.

Tab was one of the three core ingredients of their meal plate,

is what I would say, at the day.

But Tab is not green and it's not Irish.

And my husband who is also has no, well, he calls himself a Heiden's 57.

So it will, we'll do that.

The funny thing is that his mother always thought the McDonald was

her, was her maiden name was Irish.

She found out that it was Scott when they went to Ireland and they said,

no, you're not Irish, you're Scottish.

And like, oh, so lot of confusion.

She could stop eating green things and go to something else.

But you know, Nancy, we should note that.

Our book is about combining traditions and storytelling.

There's a lot of Irish traditions, right?

Oh yeah, and they are natural born storytellers, which

again is part of their lore.

I mean, they spread all over the country.

With their diasporas and they bumped up into other immigration, immigrant kind

of communities and They just have spread that whole stick and you go back to st.

Patrick's Day, which is on March 17th to commemorate the day He died in 651.

I think it was 451 461 A.

D., like it matters, right?

But, he died then and we celebrate.

And it's a huge celebration.

It's all about leprechauns and shamrocks and all things green and lively and fun.

Being round.

And round.

And by the way, don't let a leprechaun wear green because

then they can't see you.

You're invisible to a leprechaun.

It won't pinch your rear end.

If the leprechaun wears green or if you wear green?

No, if you do.

You're invisible to the leprechaun.

Yeah, just important, And leprechauns do sneaky things, don't they?

They're kind of, little devils.

Yeah, kind of like the, what is it?

The Lenny Charms cereal with the little pictures.

Magically delicious.

Oh my.

Just, not just Tab in your history, right?

There's not singing in my history either, so, that's besides the point.

So yeah, got parades.

All over the world that celebrate these things.

What's the biggest one?

Do you know?

Do you know the biggest one?

Well, I would think that the biggest one is probably New York

just because of the history.

And I did actually attend a St. Paddy's Day parade in New York

because I was working in New York one year and I thought, I'm just

going to venture out at lunchtime.

You couldn't, you couldn't wedge yourself between people on the sidewalk and the

building, it was so packed, and Lord knows what would happen if there was a fire,

or some sort of, I'll say, murderous act, where all the police had to go running.

I guess it amounted to Patrol would have had to go running

through the crowds instead.

But it was pretty interesting that all the people that you would need

in case of an emergency were walking down the green double aisle or

the double line down Fifth Avenue.

And it was a very impressive.

Crowd that and everybody pouring out of any bar was not able to stand up straight

I wonder are they the ones are the Irish the ones that said, you know, the byline

is always go have it I cannot do an Irish accent, but Well, you're from South.

You're from Kentucky.

You can't do it It's ruined my Irish background, my genetics.

But have a pint.

Have a pint.

I don't know whether that's the Irish or the English.

It may be the English.

But speaking of pint, let's, let's talk about pints for a while because obviously,

you think of beer and Irish whiskey and the Irish coffee, of course, you've got

that, which I don't particularly like.

But that said, There is a kind of a funky little tradition about

drinking your, well, it's actually called drowning this shamrock.

And have you heard about that one?

No.

What is that all about?

Drowning a shamrock.

Drowning a shamrock, right?

I guess it's not like drowning a leprechaun.

That's maybe you would need the.

The Irish police after you for that one, but it's apparently this tradition.

You put a shamrock in the bottom of your drinking glass or somebody who's

pouring the beer or the whiskey or whatever puts the shamrock on the bottom.

And when you get to the bottom of the glass, you're supposed to.

Take the shamrock out, hopefully it's a four leaf clover, not just a

plain old three leaf clover, right?

And toss it over your left shoulder for good luck.

I don't know if you do that with salt too.

I was going to say.

Maybe that's what the Mexicans like, a margarita, right?

An Irish margarita, and it's supposed to bring you bad luck.

Oh, not bad luck, but good luck.

Of course.

And if you by accident, this is my tradition, I would say.

I'll start a new one.

If by accident you actually swallowed that shamrock, I'll throw in

another one and have another pint.

Oh, have another pint.

By the way, let me ask you a question.

Are shamrocks, okay, I'm going to display ignorance here, okay,

are shamrocks organic things or are they just little stickers?

Oh, well, a shamrock is an organic thing.

It's clover, right?

It's clover.

Okay, it's synonymous with clover.

All right.

That's what I would say.

I think there's different sizes, but since it's at the bottom of a glass,

I would think that you could probably eat it or drink it, too, so we'll

just call that a food tradition.

I have just lost all my Irish roots.

Oh, by the way, why is everything green?

Let's talk about that.

Why green there?

Well, iron is green, right?

It's the Emerald Isle, and green is the color that people sort

of associate St. Patrick with.

Although it used to be blue, which is kind of, because the blue skies.

And I'm not sure how it transitioned over to green.

Maybe there's something in the tartans that made it green, but I don't know.

I think it's the landscape and all of that.

I think it was part of some big rebellions.

You know, the Irish were into rebellions.

Yeah.

They were rebellious a lot.

Definitely.

Loquacious and rebellious.

And pint drinkers.

Okay.

Well, it got them figured.

But I think it had to do with a couple of revolutions that they, and, and

they had the flag, the green flag.

But one is Nancy.

You've talked to me about this.

What is the most unusual reason that it might be that green

became such an emblematic color?

Well, I had heard a story, and I think you've debunked it, that during the

famine, the people over in Ireland, because they couldn't get enough food, and

especially potatoes, which were the prime source of, I guess, food in region at

the time, they ate grass or green things.

And so they had green tongues.

But I don't think that's true.

It sounds very mysterious, very colorful, I would say.

They dyed green.

Colorful.

Right?

Well, here's what I, at least I can tell.

They did eat grass.

A lot of cultures do eat grass cause there's good grass and there's bad grass.

Right?

And, but they were hungry and they ate what was around.

And I think the myth part is whether they did have green mouths.

It, well, that makes sense, but you know, it's myth.

But, you know, a cow eats a lot of grass, and I don't think their tongues are green.

I haven't examined them lately.

I go find myself a pasture.

Yeah, yeah, somebody asked us once if we were gonna get a cow, and I said, mm, you

know, because we've got a few acres here now, and I'm thinking, a cow is cute from

a distance, and, but, they're all snotty.

They're all snotty cows.

We can start something here, Nancy.

A trend on TikTok.

Snotty cows.

Teenagers, teenagers going out in the pastures, not tipping cows, Oh yeah.

but looking in their mouths to see if their tongues are green.

Yeah, that would be kind of stinky.

slimy and stinky.

so anyway.

one thing that is also very synonymous with St.

Patrick's Day is corned beef and cabbage.

And I have to say, my mom would try and make this a couple of times in the

course of our lives and boiled beef and, boiled cabbage, oh, disgusting.

I mean, excuse me, I just cut up a piece of paper and boil

it and let me chew on it.

Like no flavor as far as I'm concerned.

Right.

Boiled, boiled in salt and pepper, and that was mom's cooking style,

which, all right, mom, sorry.

I didn't mean to say that about you, but she's going to come

back and haunt me in my dreams.

That said, she's probably laughing, but she did some really good things too,

but it was, she never got the Irish cooking down, probably because she was

English in background from her parents, but no flavor unless you're just.

Loading it with lots of butter and salt and pepper and even still,

maybe that's where I need the Guinness on the side to drink.

Yeah, of course, that butter is pretty magical, isn't it?

And they are known for their butter.

It's pretty good.

Do you think maybe we should take a break before we talk too much

about food and get right into it?

Yeah, let's do that.

We'll have a pint and come back in a minute.

I can guarantee that you'll want to stick around for just a moment to hear the rest.

of this story.

But before we take you there, Sylvie and I want to share news about our newest book

called My Family Tree Food and Stories.

We've created this one just for you and your family and friends.

It's designed as a type of journal where you can relive and share

your family recipes and stories.

Honestly, most people think of a plate of food as just that, food.

But when paired with a good story, each bite becomes a banquet of joy,

laughter, maybe even a few tears, and memories that never go stale.

To get more details and a special gift from us, go to book.

familyfoodstories.

com.

We've got a lot more fun and a lot more to come down the road.

Or, just to put on your plate.

But for now, let's get back to the rest of this family tree food story.

Okay, so we're back, Sylvia, and we were talking about

having a pint and snotty cows.

We did get into TikTok a little bit, Maybe we should call it, Oh

TikTok, since it's St. Patrick's Day.

Oh TikTok.

By the way, just as an aside, that is a latest, you know what?

The latest TikTok rage.

among young people.

It's a cool one, actually.

It's a neat one.

They go into grocery stores and all the different cultures and how

much you can tell about a culture by looking at its grocery store.

Don't you love that?

That's one of my favorite things to do when we're traveling and

even the difference in the States.

So Boston is known as a very big Irish community, Irish

and Italian community too.

But you think of the Boston police and they really are just, it's there.

I mean, They're probably all green in their mouths and their tongues.

I just don't know about it.

I never asked.

I never asked a Boston cop to go, ah.

Or stick out his tongue.

But anyway, back to that story.

The grocery stores, even in Boston, are different than they are.

Uh huh, they are.

Right down by the Cape where my parents were, which was very

Cape Verdean and Portuguese.

So you've got a lot of difference between just even the local

grocery stores and what goes on.

And down here in Florida, well, there's a lot of Hispanic and I have to laugh.

So this is sort of a side sidebar.

Maybe it's Oh Spanish Day as opposed to Oh Irish Day.

But I always thought that, the Mexican section in the grocery

store in Connecticut was considered the international section.

Well, it's not.

When you're in Florida.

I have to laugh.

It's like, okay, so this is just, we've just moved into a different land.

It's Florida.

But it's kind of interesting.

Well, just one more thought on that.

There are even different cultures in grocery stores of the same

brand name in communities.

I see that with my Kroger's.

Kroger's is our predominant one.

Just different personalities.

And my father famously said one day, he was working class all the way, he did not

want to go to the rich people's Kroger's.

He wanted to go to the poor people's Kroger's.

I'm sure.

that's very interesting.

Yeah, it was.

But anyway, back to Irish food.

Right.

Yeah.

Potato famine.

That was the big deal.

1845. Do you know what caused the blight.

It was potato disease caused the potato famine.

So was it a mold, a fungus, or was it a bug?

You know, I don't know about blight.

It sounds buggy.

Although not necessarily.

Blight could also be a bacterial something or other, I don't know.

It's kind of moist over there, the air is kind of wet, so.

But, so we've done drowning the shamrock, we've talked

about corned beef and cabbage.

Although, I understand if you put pork in that, that it tastes pretty good.

So that's the tradition of, Anything with bacon or pork is pretty great.

Right, And apparently they did that a lot.

Oh, how about salmon?

Can I talk to you about salmon?

Please do.

I find such a great interest in salmon.

My mother was Eastern Kentucky and just meat and potatoes kind

of gal. that's all she did.

But she would have canned salmon.

I noticed that was always on her grocery list.

You'd get a can of salmon, but it's in cans and you pour it out and

you make salmon cakes out of it.

And she did, and we served that once a week, as I grew older, I was like, Salmon?

That's like a big time dish.

It's expensive, and all of that.

Okay.

Well, then I traced it back to Ireland, and again, kind of out of the Irish

storytelling mode, it's about salmon.

It was a big, giant, mean, salmon.

Mean salmon, okay.

Had all the, all the knowledge in the world.

And whoever caught that salmon would also have all the great knowledge in the world.

So Finn, like both of these people are named Finn, but anyway, Finn caught the

salmon and he asked his assistant to cook the salmon while he took a nap.

Well, you had to eat the salmon, right?

Well, he burned his finger, the assistant burned his finger, licked his thumb,

and all of a sudden he was the recipient of all the knowledge in the world.

And when Finn woke up, he said, You could just eat the whole salmon

because it's all over with now.

I won't be able to get the salmons.

So the other one, the assistant, was then the keeper of all the knowledge of the

world every time he licked his thumb.

There you go.

Salmon.

I'm gonna start licking my thumb.

So salmon.

I wouldn't know what the market's gonna do before it closes.

Here's the great thing about storytelling and food is you can just see him with that

fishing pole, you know, over the well.

The thing resided in a well.

And there were, trees surrounding the, I forget if they were olive

trees, what kind of trees they were, not olives, I'm sure, in Ireland,

but they were surrounding the well.

And I can't remember, I think the salmon ate those, and that's

how it got its knowledge base.

But anyway, that's enough of salmon, but I just always love to

tell that story because it found its way over, over the Appalachian

mountain chain and into Kentucky.

Right, and this was canned salmon you had, right, as a kid?

Canned, canned salmon.

Yeah.

I used to love canned salmon as a child and I saw it a couple of,

well, we moved down to Florida and I saw it and it's canned salmon.

We should get some of that.

That's a pretty good price.

Tried it.

That's the most disgusting food I've ever eaten in my entire life.

It's funny how your taste changes as you get older, right?

It really does.

It I used to love it.

I used to love it.

So, some other things that, yeah, some other things that go on in

the course of the good old St. Patrick's Day celebrations beyond

corned beef and cabbage, there's like Irish stew and Irish soda bread.

I love Irish soda bread.

Just pour it on my hips.

So I have a quick story on that.

And I did say when we started that I didn't have a story.

Actually, I do have a story.

We had a fourth grade teacher.

There's a group of us in, in my grammar school in Glenwood Landing Grammar

School in Long Island, New York.

And our teacher loved us in our class so much that she wanted

to keep us for fifth grade.

It became quite a sensation in the community, but we did, you know,

we had her for two years in a row.

But one of the things she liked to do is, Ms. Patterson, is that she liked to cook.

And she was able to get a mobile oven into the classroom one day

and we made Irish soda bread in our class in fourth grade for St.

Patrick's Day.

It was so much fun.

She was great.

Yeah.

And she reminded me of sort of a little leprechaun.

She always had this bun and this big long hair that she never let down until one

day we asked her to, some of the girls, we all said, could you put your hair down?

I think she was probably, maybe all of.

You're like, what, about five, two?

Yeah.

And, but we were kids.

It was fourth grade.

So, you know.

So what is soda bread?

What was it different?

Yeah.

How's it different from real bread?

Well, I'm, I, I can't remember how it's made because I haven't made

it as an adult, but that said, I think it's baking soda, right?

And that's the leavening, but it's, sweet.

and it's dense.

It's a denser.

It's not even cake.

It's a denser, drier bread.

I would say it's more like a scone, but it's big and with raisins in it.

And there's something that's just so delicious about it that I just love.

Just slather it with butter or I can eat it dry.

I don't need anything else.

Just give me it.

A glass of milk, or a pint, and a slab of Irish soda bread, and I'm

happy, so it's a special treat.

Yeah, soda bread, shepherd's pie, there's another one.

Oh, I grew up with shepherd's pie, that was a good one,

when mom How'd she make it?

Well, she made it with leftover, like a roast, and you put it in the grinder.

And then she would put onions and things like that, onions and mushrooms in it.

She didn't, she really, she put peas in it, really.

But one day, I remember at school as a kid, they had shepherd's pie and they

had corn in it and corn sweetened it up.

And I was like, Oh my God, like we have got the fanciest grammar school on

the face of the planet because we have corn in our shepherd's pie, but no, and

then potato on top, you know, little.

Yeah.

Crusted kind of potato.

Yeah.

It was good.

Isn't it interesting how our food traditions kind of come together?

Well, just like the beef stew and cabbage, it used to be bacon and cabbage

until the Irish bumped into the Italians and all the other diet, and the places

where you get beef, corned beef, delis, I guess, in the early days, and they

determined that was cheaper than bacon.

I thought, fascinating.

A corned beef sandwich was something that if I'm correct.

That you would get the big corned beef sandwiches.

We're at the, the Jewish jellies, right?

Although, mashed all that together.

Yeah, that's another story.

I remember my first time going into a Jewish deli in, in New York.

I had a job at an ad agency and I was so excited, like, oh my god, just

like back home and in Long Island.

I'd been in Massachusetts for far too long and I'm gonna get this really

great Well, what I didn't realize is that the deli that I grew up with

was not necessarily a Jewish deli.

It was a German deli.

So it wasn't quite the same.

I go in and I ask for a ham and cheese on rye with mayonnaise.

And they look at me.

Oh, yeah.

And they said, can't do that.

I'm like, Oh, somebody says it's a Jewish jolly.

I said, Oh, so how about ham and cheese and no mayonnaise?

Look again.

How about ham and no mayonnaise?

Mustard.

Look again.

How about tuna fish?

Oh, that's a great story.

Though it was kind of disappointing realizing that it was a kid.

So much for my ethic, being an ethnic aficionado.

Oh, no.

That's hilarious.

In my 20s, like, all right, next.

One of the interesting food things that come out of Ireland,

and actually I'd say England as well, and Scotland, is puddings.

A lot of puddings, kind of gross to us now, but that is based on the tradition

of killing hogs and whatever animals for food on November 11th for the winter

and taking every part of the animal.

So that is the origin of blood pudding and black pudding.

Is it a preservative or it's just a flavoring?

Do you know?

I think it's actual stuff.

I mean, the actual blood was in there, right.

Yeah.

there's another Polish jelly around by us and they have the blood sausage,

which we tried once, it was okay.

I wouldn't order it again, but then.

What is blood sausage?

I fear to ask.

Well, this was kielbasa, so it's a big sausage.

And I guess the blood goes into the flavor as part of the

flavoring is, and it's dark.

it's like a blackish, darkish kind of sausage.

But I found it kind of dry.

It wasn't to my liking, but I tried it.

So that was, that was it.

I'm sure there's an Irish story around blood sausage somewhere

along the line that's got something interesting that's going to happen.

Frighten the kids and bring some sort of nasty leprechaun or a

troll under the bridge to make sure they behave for St. Patrick's Day.

And you know, an interesting show we should explore sometime is how food

tastes different to us in different ways.

Like a small Coke tastes better than a big Coke.

It's the same thing.

or I wouldn't eat blood sausage just because that's the name of it.

Even if it tastes good, you know, just I would try it, but I won't eat frog's

legs because I've seen on TV how they do that, like that's kind of disgusting, but

you're from Kentucky, so you eat kind of strange things in the swamp, don't you?

You do, you do here in the state.

You make use of everything, there's roadkill, you know, all that.

Speaking of storytelling, and there's always a nice end to a story that makes us

live happily ever after, at least we hope so, so that we have sweet dreams later on.

And you've got a few sayings, we don't have stories at this particular point,

but you've got a few sayings that are interesting to wrap up our St.

Patrick's Day celebration here.

What is once said that three foods.

In Ireland, meat, potatoes, and Guinness.

there you go.

And about cooking Irish food.

Just boil everything and hope for the best.

Yeah, that's kind of boring, right?

Next.

Here's an interesting one.

Hunger is good sauce.

In other words, if you're hungry.

It'll make food taste better, right?

If you're not too hungry, I suspect.

Well, I guess if you're hungry, everything tastes better.

Yeah.

But maybe even grass, right?

Yeah.

Laughter is brightest where food is best.

And here's the final one that I found.

Tea solves everything.

If not, you're not drinking enough.

Or you could substitute bourbon if you're in Kentucky or Irish whiskey.

Yeah, but they're storytellers.

And I think what I love about our show and about our book, my family tree,

food and stories is that this is about bringing together stories and food.

And so much of our stories revolve around food, just like all these

Irish stories and Irish foods.

They all have the stories and the.

Iris are storytellers.

Pretty cool.

And you can't end a day without a bite of something.

At least, we hope not.

On that note, have a great St. Patrick's Day and Top of the Evening

or Top of the Morning to you all.

Bye!

Sylvia and I hope that you've loved this episode of Family Tree Food and Stories.

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Until next time, happy eating, happy storytelling, and ciao, bye bye.