December 27, 2024 • 30 mins
Tracy and Holly discuss the seasonal nature of pumpkin spice, and medicinal uses of nutmeg. They then talk about artificial versus real Christmas trees.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fried. We talked about nutmeg this week.
We listeners also don't get to know that we had
(00:21):
to take an entire pause after recording almost ten minutes
of the episode because of incredibly loud leaf flowers. Yeah,
just directly outside. And then when we started back over,
there were some more leaf flowers that returned, which was
not expected. I think I said this in version one,
(00:42):
but not in version two when we started over. In
my personal opinion, pumpkin spice flavored things are for October
live and later. And I was as soon as I
thought that, I thought, yeah, I thought, Holly is probably
like pumpkin spice. The moment it's available is I'm what
(01:04):
I'm thinking is probably your What do you mean the
moment it's available, it's never not available? Twenty four to seven,
three sixty five. I have pumpkin spice. Yeah. Do you
mean the blend? Yes? And do you also mean commercially
produced products that come out in a seasonal pumpkin spice
(01:26):
here's the good news. Yeah, some of those things come
out year round, and they just get pushed a lot. Then.
So if you're like me and you love pumpkin and
pumpkin spice everything, because I love both. Said it before
and I'll say it again. I'm the weirder that will
eat pumpkin pure out of a can. I know that's
a lot of squash too. It's not all pumpkin. I
(01:48):
don't care. I'll take all of it. But like I
have like subscriptions set up with certain vendors so that
I'm always getting my pumpkin pie, which includes pumpkin spice
coffee syrup on a quarterly shipment subscription, so I'm never
out of it. Okay, I will make my own pumpkin
(02:10):
spice everything all the time. Listen. I don't wait for
the PSL because I can't drink it anyway anymore. Okay,
I just about to segue me to another thing that
makes me I rate, but we'll get there. I have
so many feelings just because it's a little too sweet
for me. I can't handle that much sugar, so I
make a like a sugar free version at home usually.
(02:34):
But also do you remember this is into more pumpkin
than nutmeg. But several years ago, I don't know how many,
when someone did some chemical analysis and was like, there's
no pumpkin and a pumpkin spice latte. There's not supposed
to be. Hello, thank you. It's not a pumpkin latte
(02:56):
is spice latte. It is the spices, including the glorious nutmeg. Yeah. Yes,
that makes me irate every time. Yeah, here's my one
other thing, okay, Tracy V. Wilson, Yes, you left out
the most important use of nutmeg and why it is
a year round spice. Please tell me cocktail garnish. Oh sure, Yeah,
(03:21):
if you're making flips, if you're making painkillers, if you're
making a variety of cocktails. Yeah, have that nutmeg on
your back, the nutmeg on there. Yeah, that sounds great.
I like to drink a lot of flips, so in
it goes all day every day. Yeah. We use some
(03:43):
of the blends that often have nutmeg in there all
the time in our kitchen, like razalh. Nutt is a
frequent thing, which that is a blend that can really vary.
I think it means something like top of the shelf.
It's meant to sort of showcase the spice vendors best
(04:07):
of their product is like my understanding of how that
blend works. So you can make it yourself with lots
of different spices. You can buy one from a specific
spice shop that might be very different. But one of
the things that is often in it is nutmeg, and
that is frequently in use at our house because I
love eggnog so so much, and because those sugar cookies
(04:30):
in our family have nutmeg in the in the flavoring nutmeg,
just straight nutmeg without other flavors also in it has
always just felt like a very Christmasy specifically flavor to me. Gotcha.
And as I was researching this and I realized how
(04:51):
many other things also have nutmeg in it, like sauce.
A lot of sausages are seasoned with nutmeg, I was like, Oh,
I'm just I'm having a lot more year round nutmeg
than I ever realized, because the things in the autumn
and winter are the ones that are maybe the most
nutmeg forward of all of them. I do love all
(05:12):
of those things. They are really delicious. Something that I
stumbled onto after having written the episode that I didn't
I'd already sent you that line. Don't even know why
I found this after the fact I had moved on
to another topic, but it is one of my old favorite,
uh one of my old favorite topics that we've card
(05:32):
on the show, which is Hildegarde of Bingen, who I
just have a big fondness for. She apparently believed that
nutmeg had quote a great warmth and a good temperament
in its strength. If a person eats nutmeg, it opens
the heart and purifies the senses and brings a good disposition.
(05:53):
What a lovely thing to associate with nutmeg. This is
from her physica, which she talks about medicinal uses of
all of these different spices and herbs and things like that,
among other topics, and she talks about pulverizing equal weights
of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves and making little cakes with
that mixture along with fine whole wheat and water, and
(06:17):
then said that eating these would open the heart and
relieve impaired senses and make the mind more cheerful. So
various people have turned that very basic instruction into a
recipe that they call cookies of Joy, and all of
that sounds super delicious to me, and there's a recommendation
to eat it every day. I sure would eat that
(06:39):
every day. I have a question, okay about things you
eat huh, because you mentioned sugar cookies are a Christmas
tradition for you. Huh. Are they a special thing for
you for Christmas? Or do do your family make them
year round? Or is there a Christmas only version. I
have made them myself at other times of the year
(06:59):
as a family recipe. They are a Christmas thing. They
are made at Christmas. They are decorated for Christmas with
usually colored sanding, sugar, and sometimes other little things, the
sort of decorative elements that are always very Christmas y
in there doing so. My grandmother is the first I
(07:25):
guess great grandmother, first generation of the family who's like
whose sugar cookies I heard about from the family because
she had died before I was born, but people would
talk about how thin she was able to get them
in a way that other people in the family just
could not replicate. By the time I was born, my
grandmother was making them, My mom was making them. My
(07:49):
mom is not able to do that anymore because of
her disabilities. My dad does them now and they are
super good. I look forward to them every year when
I have made them. For some other purpose. I have
usually cut them out into different shapes because they're they're
rolled and cut with cutters, and so I have cut
(08:11):
them using different shape cookie cutters and decorated them differently
for different purposes and eating them. It still felt a
little Christmas need to me because that association is so
strong with them. There, I'm fascinated. Yeah. Yeah, there are
other sugar cookies that are like I would just either
buy from a store or eat that do not have
(08:34):
that Christmas connotation for me. Oh, now I have more questions.
Oh okay, just these may or may not be good
for Behind the scenes, I'm just like, okay, how do
they taste different from regular sugar cookies. Well, I've had
sugar cookies that have just instead of having nutmeg, have
maybe had some other spice flavoring them, or maybe there's
(08:58):
been just vanilla and nutmeg coure. Like I think just
because there's also eggnog, having a lot of nutmeg in it,
just it feels like a Christmasy flavor to me in
a lot of ways. I think one of the reasons
that it's used in so many fall and winter traditional
(09:19):
foods here in the US is that it can feel
very warming. Oh yeah, it's a very warming flavor, and
so it's comforting to have it. It goes into the blend
called warming spices. Yeah, that makes total sense to me.
I seem to remember at one point in my life
(09:42):
another seasonal thing for usually Thanksgiving in my family is
called per semon pudding. And if you've never had per
semon putting, the texture of it is almost like pumpkin
pie fill, but there's an almost figginess to it because
(10:02):
of the texture of the per simmons. And I seem
to remember there being a very heated argument about whether
there was supposed to be nutmeg in there because somebody
else had made it other than the ant who usually
did that, and there was just a big controversy about
(10:27):
whether nutmeg was correct to have in there. See, as
we mentioned in the episode, people have very strong feelings
yeah about yeah these things. But here's my take. Okay,
there may be a way person X makes it right,
Like the way I make a cookie may not be
(10:47):
the way someone else makes the same cookie or the
cookie with the same name, But like my reaction is
never to be that it's wrong, But like I want
to try your kind too. Oh sure, yeah, I don't
know if that's just my gluttony driving the bus of like, sure,
let me try all of it. Yeah. Yeah, I never
(11:08):
understand getting mad about people not doing things the way
you do them. Yeah, I have seen this phenomenon. And
when you know, when it comes to me saying that
I want to have pumpkin spice flavored things in the autumn,
that's just me. If you want to whenever, have it whenever.
I'll also get mad at the weather if it becomes
(11:28):
fall and I feel like it's too warm outside to
be having some kind of gigantic pumpkin spice coffee beverage
because iced it's not as good to me as some
other things are good as an iced coffee. So yeah,
(11:49):
I as we said in the episode, I know this
is not just about holiday foods, but it's December, so
that's what I'm thinking about the most right now is
coming out the week of Christmas, in which uh, probably
there will be a lot of eggnog at my house,
(12:12):
possibly also sugar cookies. It's my dad. If my dad
continues to make them, because he is also getting older
in years and things take more and more effort to
do them as we age. Yeah, I'll probably make a
lot of flips. Yeah, yeah, yeah, although lately I've been
doing different things with flips, like making them spicy and
(12:34):
putting red pepper on them instead of instead. Oh, that
sounds really interesting. It is. It's a it's really just
like you're listen, I'll give out a cocktail recipe. It's
like two ounces of your brandy or your cognac, whichever
you prefer, an ounce of chili liqueur, your whole egg.
You can add like a half ounce of Demarara syrup
(12:56):
if you want. Give it a good dry shake so
the egg gets nice and frothy, and then you can
shake it with ice and pour it out, strain it out,
and then we just top it with a little red
pepper flake. Yum. It's like a spicy, not quite old
school Christmas y winter bevy. That's a little different, you know.
(13:17):
I just love it. Yeah, work shopping it over here.
We're always playing. We're always playing. But there are a
lot of good drinks that have nutmeg on them. Talked
about Christmas decor this year, Yeah, I have so many
(13:40):
thoughts on this matter. There's so many things to talk
about because people have strong feelings about Christmas decor one.
I don't care when you want to put it up. Yeah,
as we've mentioned. I think we've talked about it here
before because I grew up going to craft stores. Holidays
are year round to me anyway, Like I don't have
(14:00):
weird like only after Thanksgiving, only after labor d like
whenever my house is Halloween twenty four seven, three sixty five,
so like I have it all the time. But Christmas.
I know people that put up their Christmas trees extra
early this year because they just felt like they needed
some joy. None of this like up on the twenty fourth,
then down in a couple of weeks. Thing, sure, and
(14:24):
ours has no rules. We get to it when we
get to it, and it comes down when it comes down,
it's fine. I definitely have a memory of my mom
one year saying that we were not going to take
the Christmas tree down until we had received some gifts
that another family member had promised they were sending. Listen,
(14:44):
don't do that, because it was like May thirtieth before
we took that tree down. Yeah, which is fine if
you're into it, but I think she was just adamant that,
like we had to have the tree until the I
don't know why. Yeah, don't do that. Okay, the big
very argument spawning question, uh huh, realer artificial artificial because
(15:11):
I have an artificial because too. So Yeah. So when
I was little, for the first few years of my childhood,
we did have a live tree every year, and then
eventually moved to artificial, and I think part of the
reason with that was just that the cleanup from the
real tree was a lot. My mom had felt like
(15:33):
artificial trees were really ugly, and so getting to the
point of one in the late seventies early eighties that
that was attractive enough, I think was part of it.
For my part, I have always had cats, and I
feel like an artificial tree can be managed a little
(15:57):
better for the cats. I know people probably we have
the opposite conclusion for other reasons. Another big reason, though,
is that my spouse has a range of allergies to
the natural world and bringing a live tree into our
house would probably aggravate some of them. So what we
(16:17):
have is not just an artificial tree. It is a
pre lit artificial pencil style tree. Because we live in
a house in New England that we could afford to buy,
which means it is small. There is not a lot
of available floor space for a whole the whole footprint
of the base of a typically shaped tree, so it
(16:41):
is very narrow, which also seems to have knock on
wood kept the cats from trying to climb up into it,
like the branches are not really big enough to support
a whole cat, and they, for the most part, have
not messed with it every year since we have had
the tree and cats. Okay, my artificial because is a
(17:02):
little more troubling a story for some people. Okay, Oh, okay,
I'm just gonna I've written a story in my head,
and I'm gonna tell you whether it was right. We'll see. Okay.
So one year when I was a kid, my dad
was stationed overseas. My mom insisted that we get a
(17:22):
real tree that year. We didn't always sometimes we would
have artificials, sometimes you would have a real one. There
was no rhyme or reason. And we got a real
one that year, and we got it home and we
put it in its little stand with the water, and
we put all the decorations on it, and we even
put some gifts under it because we already had some.
And the next morning we woke up to what I'm
(17:45):
gonna guess was millions of spiders, Yeah, everywhere, all over everything. Yeah. Yeah,
my guest was gonna be bug infestation in the tree. Yes,
And I like spider's fine, but that was overwhelming and
I don't really want to invite them over for Christmas.
They can if they show up in my house, I
will treat them with hospitality and find them a place outside,
(18:08):
but they're not like on the guest list. And a
lot after that, I just remember being like, I will
never have a real tree, and I haven't now the
cat thing. I'm stalling a little bit to talk about
my terrible buying habits, but the cat thing. We had
a funny turn of events, which is that some years back,
(18:31):
I don't know ten, possibly more, not much more, we
had been in our house a few years and I
was like, hey, when we were in our apartment, we
only had like a little the kind you would put
on like a table, like one of those little dinky
two to three foot or things. Yeah, and we'd been like,
maybe we get a tree. And we got a tree
(18:53):
that year, and we decided that we would like test
it by just putting it out without ornaments and seeing
what happened mm hmm. And at the time we had
we have five or six at that point, we had
some cats. And we went to work one day and
we came home and not only was the tree obviously trashed,
(19:14):
but two of the branches were in our bed. Okay.
There was just like I was like, did someone break in?
Like it was so bad? Yeah, yeah, it was so bad.
And it was like, I don't understand what's taking place here.
And I of course fingered the usual suspect and I
was like, you are the bad cat. This is clearly
(19:35):
your doing. But we didn't take the tree down, probably
because we were just like too lazy, m And we
went to work. The next day, we came home and
there was more mayhem. And on the third day we
came home and the culprit was asleep in the trashed
out tree okay, and it was not the one I thought.
(19:55):
It was one of the sweetest cats we've ever had,
how funny. And when I awakened him from his slumber,
which he had had to thread himself through some branches
because so many were missing at that point, like he
had to do acrobatic work to find a place that
would support his weight because he also was not a
tiny cat, and it was not mister Burns. Don't anybody
(20:17):
think it. It was one of our lovely Siamese. And
when I awakened him, it was one of the only
times he was ever insolent, and he looked at me like,
what are you doing? Call the manager like he was
like irritated it me for being mad that he had
destroyed the tree and made a clubhouse. We eventually started
putting up a tree when when those cats, our Siamese
(20:39):
were quite young, then they were only like two, and
when they hit about seven or eight, they had chilled
out a little bit, and so we started putting up
a tree again. And it's been fine. Yeah, And now
we just had the two boys left, and I this
is where I confess to like a problem in my life. Okay, okay.
First of all, I love our Christmas tree. It's per
(21:00):
and it's fun and we put toys on it and
it's great. But I like other colors. And apparently in
a fugue state, which sometimes happens to me, I get
up in the morning and while I'm waiting for my
coffee to be ready, I get on my phone and
I do things that I'm not even aware of and
don't remember. Right, long story short, I now also have
(21:22):
a pink tree and a black tree, and I don't
know where they're gonna go. That's great. We have no
idea where there's those are gonna go. But we'll find
this space somewhere. But it's we're going to have fun. Now.
(21:45):
This brings us to the important grown up part of
the discussion. I did not realize until I was working
on this episode how much vehement arguing has gone on
since the sixties and continues to go on about whether
it is better for the environment to have an artificial
tree or a natural tree. Both sides of the argument
(22:08):
continue to be so completely confident that I don't know
because right, like the various parts, there's more to it.
I'm certainly not going to be able to parse out
the whole thing quickly and casually. But like, obviously, like
the idea of cutting down trees is part of what
people are like, we are destroying a natural resource. Why
(22:30):
would you do that? The earth needs trees. They're being
grown for that purpose though, right, And also like then
you have to throw it away and it becomes a
trash thing. And yeah, there which again that there are
other things that can be done with that. A lot
of places like chip it and use it for mult
or whatever. Yeah, my community has a tree pickup day
(22:53):
that it then mulched. Whereas you know artificial trees, people
are like, well, yeah, but that is part of big industry.
It's creating you know, industrial waste and manufacture. And now
most of the trees you would get in the US
are made overseas. And not only is that like does
that mean we don't necessarily know about all the regulations
(23:15):
around how they're made, but also you have a pretty
significant footprint in terms of transporting those items to homes
in the US, and that is bad. Now there are
still companies in the US that make artificial trees, and
there are people that are like, no, but that has
created a lot of jobs. Listen, there are arguments on
(23:37):
both sides. I just wanted to acknowledge that people argue
about it. Yeah, I the tree that we are using
we bought the year we bought this house, and we
are going to continue using it until it's no longer functional.
Like yeah, like that's how that's going to work. And
(23:59):
occasionally I will see arguments about whether something is really
sustainable in quotation marks that goes into something like the
amount of energy it takes to make a reusable coffee
mug versus the amount of energy it takes to make
a you know, wax lined or whatever paper coffee cup. Right,
And it's like, okay, but did you factor in the
(24:22):
fact that people are going to use that mug that
mug until they die? Right? That's the thing there. There
isn't a lot of good information on usage cases that
extrapolate along like the potential lifetime of such a thing.
(24:43):
We had. The artificial tree that we had for a
long time was the one that I grew up with. Yeah, yeah,
and we inherited it, and frankly, we finally got rid
of of it because and when I say I grew
up with that, I mean that thing was probably made
in maybe nineteen seventy. It has taken on a weird
(25:04):
odor m hm, like not musty, but a unique the
way plastics breaking down start to smell, and it had
started to melt in places when it was around lights
that weren't even necessarily that hot. Yeah, And I was like,
safety gone, Like we have gotten you know, thirty five
(25:24):
years out of history. I think it's okay to say goodbye. Yeah, so, yeah,
I I like the fantasy colors, is my problem? Yeah,
I think that sounds very fun. I love a pig tree.
I love our purple tree very much. Can we talk
briefly about the German pickle situation? Okay, you know about
(25:47):
the pickle right, hiding the pickle in the tree ornaments, right,
which I had always heard. You know, if you go
to Epcot in the Germany pavilion, they'll sell y'all a
pickle ornaments. But I was reading a blog written by
a German person who claims that is belgoney and that
if you ask anybody who is actually from Germany, they'll
be like, we don't know where this pickle thing started.
(26:08):
So that leads me to the question of then is
it a German American thing? I don't know, which is
really why I'm putting this at the end of our discussion,
because I'm putting a call out. Yeah, if you know
the history of the pickle ornaments, you have delivered on
smart orange cats, you have delivered on fabulous personal ghost stories.
(26:30):
Do you know a German person that knows about the
pickle ornament? If you don't know what we're talking about
for context, just as many glass ornaments, you will sometimes
see one that looks like a pickle, and you're probably like,
what is the pick allowed to do with Christmas? Although
now you can find a glass ornament of any Yeah,
here's a cheeseburger. It's a pickle. Same thing, but allegedly
(26:54):
in the tradition that people claim comes from Germany or
possibly German Americans, like the kid that could find the
pickle ornament kind of hidden in the branches of the
tree would like get a special gift or something. And
then sometimes there's the addendum of like the first adult
(27:14):
to spot it will have extra good fortune in the
new year to come. Like there are other things, but
that's the German pickle it just in case anybody listening
had not heard of it before. And I found this
person writing a German blog and claiming they really did
not love the German pickle story because it seemed to
them like a bunch of stuff people in the US
(27:36):
made up. It's not even appropriation, it's what Yeah, So
if you know the real real, if you are from
a German households, I want to know if you know
about the pickle. Yeah, if you're from a German American household.
I want to know if you know about the pickles. Yeah,
I just want to I just want experiential evidence of
(27:56):
actual human beings, right, and not catalogs as correct. Yeah,
I will say I will sometimes see discourse on whatever
app about whether this or that thing actually comes from
a place, and a lot of times it's like, yeah,
(28:20):
that doesn't come from that place. That is something that
has developed within the communities of immigrants from that place
riving in the United States, and that has its own
worth and value one hundred percent one percent, and it does.
I mean, I start to think of it in terms
of like, how could this have played out, and like
(28:44):
at a time when you know, Christmas ornaments also not
cheap for a long time, and even now, like you
can buy cheapy ones, but like nice ones can be
really pricey. And I could see a family being like,
this would be a fun way to add add something
special to our tree that costs next to nothing. Huh.
It will be a fun thing for an hour on
(29:05):
Christmas morning or Christmas Eve or whenever they do their tradition, right.
That's the other thing. One of the things that people
say is the detractor is that the way that story
is told often in the US it is when the
kids wake up on Christmas morning blah blah blah. But
in Germany you don't usually do your gift thing on
Christmas morning. That's a Christmas Eve situation, and so they're like,
that's your first clue that this is wrong. So again
(29:31):
you've delivered on the orange cats that are smart, I believe.
Now now with the German pickle, we are now past Christmas.
So I hope that if you celebrate Christmas, that you
had a very beautiful Christmas that was filled with love
and joy and delicious sugar cookies if you're in Tracy's
(29:52):
and many other families, or other delicious things, because the
best part of Christmas is feasting, in my book, and
that you feels that you've gotten some rest and relaxation
out of the deal. If you are headed into your
weekend right now, I hope you get a little more
of that. And if you're not headed into your weekend,
I still hope that you find some time to recharge
(30:14):
and that you have had great holidays, and that the
new year, which is coming up quickly, will also be good.
We will be right back here tomorrow with the classic episode,
and then up Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:38):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fried. We talked about nutmeg this week.
We listeners also don't get to know that we had
(00:21):
to take an entire pause after recording almost ten minutes
of the episode because of incredibly loud leaf flowers. Yeah,
just directly outside. And then when we started back over,
there were some more leaf flowers that returned, which was
not expected. I think I said this in version one,
(00:42):
but not in version two when we started over. In
my personal opinion, pumpkin spice flavored things are for October
live and later. And I was as soon as I
thought that, I thought, yeah, I thought, Holly is probably
like pumpkin spice. The moment it's available is I'm what
(01:04):
I'm thinking is probably your What do you mean the
moment it's available, it's never not available? Twenty four to seven,
three sixty five. I have pumpkin spice. Yeah. Do you
mean the blend? Yes? And do you also mean commercially
produced products that come out in a seasonal pumpkin spice
(01:26):
here's the good news. Yeah, some of those things come
out year round, and they just get pushed a lot. Then.
So if you're like me and you love pumpkin and
pumpkin spice everything, because I love both. Said it before
and I'll say it again. I'm the weirder that will
eat pumpkin pure out of a can. I know that's
a lot of squash too. It's not all pumpkin. I
(01:48):
don't care. I'll take all of it. But like I
have like subscriptions set up with certain vendors so that
I'm always getting my pumpkin pie, which includes pumpkin spice
coffee syrup on a quarterly shipment subscription, so I'm never
out of it. Okay, I will make my own pumpkin
(02:10):
spice everything all the time. Listen. I don't wait for
the PSL because I can't drink it anyway anymore. Okay,
I just about to segue me to another thing that
makes me I rate, but we'll get there. I have
so many feelings just because it's a little too sweet
for me. I can't handle that much sugar, so I
make a like a sugar free version at home usually.
(02:34):
But also do you remember this is into more pumpkin
than nutmeg. But several years ago, I don't know how many,
when someone did some chemical analysis and was like, there's
no pumpkin and a pumpkin spice latte. There's not supposed
to be. Hello, thank you. It's not a pumpkin latte
(02:56):
is spice latte. It is the spices, including the glorious nutmeg. Yeah. Yes,
that makes me irate every time. Yeah, here's my one
other thing, okay, Tracy V. Wilson, Yes, you left out
the most important use of nutmeg and why it is
a year round spice. Please tell me cocktail garnish. Oh sure, Yeah,
(03:21):
if you're making flips, if you're making painkillers, if you're
making a variety of cocktails. Yeah, have that nutmeg on
your back, the nutmeg on there. Yeah, that sounds great.
I like to drink a lot of flips, so in
it goes all day every day. Yeah. We use some
(03:43):
of the blends that often have nutmeg in there all
the time in our kitchen, like razalh. Nutt is a
frequent thing, which that is a blend that can really vary.
I think it means something like top of the shelf.
It's meant to sort of showcase the spice vendors best
(04:07):
of their product is like my understanding of how that
blend works. So you can make it yourself with lots
of different spices. You can buy one from a specific
spice shop that might be very different. But one of
the things that is often in it is nutmeg, and
that is frequently in use at our house because I
love eggnog so so much, and because those sugar cookies
(04:30):
in our family have nutmeg in the in the flavoring nutmeg,
just straight nutmeg without other flavors also in it has
always just felt like a very Christmasy specifically flavor to me. Gotcha.
And as I was researching this and I realized how
(04:51):
many other things also have nutmeg in it, like sauce.
A lot of sausages are seasoned with nutmeg, I was like, Oh,
I'm just I'm having a lot more year round nutmeg
than I ever realized, because the things in the autumn
and winter are the ones that are maybe the most
nutmeg forward of all of them. I do love all
(05:12):
of those things. They are really delicious. Something that I
stumbled onto after having written the episode that I didn't
I'd already sent you that line. Don't even know why
I found this after the fact I had moved on
to another topic, but it is one of my old favorite,
uh one of my old favorite topics that we've card
(05:32):
on the show, which is Hildegarde of Bingen, who I
just have a big fondness for. She apparently believed that
nutmeg had quote a great warmth and a good temperament
in its strength. If a person eats nutmeg, it opens
the heart and purifies the senses and brings a good disposition.
(05:53):
What a lovely thing to associate with nutmeg. This is
from her physica, which she talks about medicinal uses of
all of these different spices and herbs and things like that,
among other topics, and she talks about pulverizing equal weights
of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves and making little cakes with
that mixture along with fine whole wheat and water, and
(06:17):
then said that eating these would open the heart and
relieve impaired senses and make the mind more cheerful. So
various people have turned that very basic instruction into a
recipe that they call cookies of Joy, and all of
that sounds super delicious to me, and there's a recommendation
to eat it every day. I sure would eat that
(06:39):
every day. I have a question, okay about things you
eat huh, because you mentioned sugar cookies are a Christmas
tradition for you. Huh. Are they a special thing for
you for Christmas? Or do do your family make them
year round? Or is there a Christmas only version. I
have made them myself at other times of the year
(06:59):
as a family recipe. They are a Christmas thing. They
are made at Christmas. They are decorated for Christmas with
usually colored sanding, sugar, and sometimes other little things, the
sort of decorative elements that are always very Christmas y
in there doing so. My grandmother is the first I
(07:25):
guess great grandmother, first generation of the family who's like
whose sugar cookies I heard about from the family because
she had died before I was born, but people would
talk about how thin she was able to get them
in a way that other people in the family just
could not replicate. By the time I was born, my
grandmother was making them, My mom was making them. My
(07:49):
mom is not able to do that anymore because of
her disabilities. My dad does them now and they are
super good. I look forward to them every year when
I have made them. For some other purpose. I have
usually cut them out into different shapes because they're they're
rolled and cut with cutters, and so I have cut
(08:11):
them using different shape cookie cutters and decorated them differently
for different purposes and eating them. It still felt a
little Christmas need to me because that association is so
strong with them. There, I'm fascinated. Yeah. Yeah, there are
other sugar cookies that are like I would just either
buy from a store or eat that do not have
(08:34):
that Christmas connotation for me. Oh, now I have more questions.
Oh okay, just these may or may not be good
for Behind the scenes, I'm just like, okay, how do
they taste different from regular sugar cookies. Well, I've had
sugar cookies that have just instead of having nutmeg, have
maybe had some other spice flavoring them, or maybe there's
(08:58):
been just vanilla and nutmeg coure. Like I think just
because there's also eggnog, having a lot of nutmeg in it,
just it feels like a Christmasy flavor to me in
a lot of ways. I think one of the reasons
that it's used in so many fall and winter traditional
(09:19):
foods here in the US is that it can feel
very warming. Oh yeah, it's a very warming flavor, and
so it's comforting to have it. It goes into the blend
called warming spices. Yeah, that makes total sense to me.
I seem to remember at one point in my life
(09:42):
another seasonal thing for usually Thanksgiving in my family is
called per semon pudding. And if you've never had per
semon putting, the texture of it is almost like pumpkin
pie fill, but there's an almost figginess to it because
(10:02):
of the texture of the per simmons. And I seem
to remember there being a very heated argument about whether
there was supposed to be nutmeg in there because somebody
else had made it other than the ant who usually
did that, and there was just a big controversy about
(10:27):
whether nutmeg was correct to have in there. See, as
we mentioned in the episode, people have very strong feelings
yeah about yeah these things. But here's my take. Okay,
there may be a way person X makes it right,
Like the way I make a cookie may not be
(10:47):
the way someone else makes the same cookie or the
cookie with the same name, But like my reaction is
never to be that it's wrong, But like I want
to try your kind too. Oh sure, yeah, I don't
know if that's just my gluttony driving the bus of like, sure,
let me try all of it. Yeah. Yeah, I never
(11:08):
understand getting mad about people not doing things the way
you do them. Yeah, I have seen this phenomenon. And
when you know, when it comes to me saying that
I want to have pumpkin spice flavored things in the autumn,
that's just me. If you want to whenever, have it whenever.
I'll also get mad at the weather if it becomes
(11:28):
fall and I feel like it's too warm outside to
be having some kind of gigantic pumpkin spice coffee beverage
because iced it's not as good to me as some
other things are good as an iced coffee. So yeah,
(11:49):
I as we said in the episode, I know this
is not just about holiday foods, but it's December, so
that's what I'm thinking about the most right now is
coming out the week of Christmas, in which uh, probably
there will be a lot of eggnog at my house,
(12:12):
possibly also sugar cookies. It's my dad. If my dad
continues to make them, because he is also getting older
in years and things take more and more effort to
do them as we age. Yeah, I'll probably make a
lot of flips. Yeah, yeah, yeah, although lately I've been
doing different things with flips, like making them spicy and
(12:34):
putting red pepper on them instead of instead. Oh, that
sounds really interesting. It is. It's a it's really just
like you're listen, I'll give out a cocktail recipe. It's
like two ounces of your brandy or your cognac, whichever
you prefer, an ounce of chili liqueur, your whole egg.
You can add like a half ounce of Demarara syrup
(12:56):
if you want. Give it a good dry shake so
the egg gets nice and frothy, and then you can
shake it with ice and pour it out, strain it out,
and then we just top it with a little red
pepper flake. Yum. It's like a spicy, not quite old
school Christmas y winter bevy. That's a little different, you know.
(13:17):
I just love it. Yeah, work shopping it over here.
We're always playing. We're always playing. But there are a
lot of good drinks that have nutmeg on them. Talked
about Christmas decor this year, Yeah, I have so many
(13:40):
thoughts on this matter. There's so many things to talk
about because people have strong feelings about Christmas decor one.
I don't care when you want to put it up. Yeah,
as we've mentioned. I think we've talked about it here
before because I grew up going to craft stores. Holidays
are year round to me anyway, Like I don't have
(14:00):
weird like only after Thanksgiving, only after labor d like
whenever my house is Halloween twenty four seven, three sixty five,
so like I have it all the time. But Christmas.
I know people that put up their Christmas trees extra
early this year because they just felt like they needed
some joy. None of this like up on the twenty fourth,
then down in a couple of weeks. Thing, sure, and
(14:24):
ours has no rules. We get to it when we
get to it, and it comes down when it comes down,
it's fine. I definitely have a memory of my mom
one year saying that we were not going to take
the Christmas tree down until we had received some gifts
that another family member had promised they were sending. Listen,
(14:44):
don't do that, because it was like May thirtieth before
we took that tree down. Yeah, which is fine if
you're into it, but I think she was just adamant that,
like we had to have the tree until the I
don't know why. Yeah, don't do that. Okay, the big
very argument spawning question, uh huh, realer artificial artificial because
(15:11):
I have an artificial because too. So Yeah. So when
I was little, for the first few years of my childhood,
we did have a live tree every year, and then
eventually moved to artificial, and I think part of the
reason with that was just that the cleanup from the
real tree was a lot. My mom had felt like
(15:33):
artificial trees were really ugly, and so getting to the
point of one in the late seventies early eighties that
that was attractive enough, I think was part of it.
For my part, I have always had cats, and I
feel like an artificial tree can be managed a little
(15:57):
better for the cats. I know people probably we have
the opposite conclusion for other reasons. Another big reason, though,
is that my spouse has a range of allergies to
the natural world and bringing a live tree into our
house would probably aggravate some of them. So what we
(16:17):
have is not just an artificial tree. It is a
pre lit artificial pencil style tree. Because we live in
a house in New England that we could afford to buy,
which means it is small. There is not a lot
of available floor space for a whole the whole footprint
of the base of a typically shaped tree, so it
(16:41):
is very narrow, which also seems to have knock on
wood kept the cats from trying to climb up into it,
like the branches are not really big enough to support
a whole cat, and they, for the most part, have
not messed with it every year since we have had
the tree and cats. Okay, my artificial because is a
(17:02):
little more troubling a story for some people. Okay, Oh, okay,
I'm just gonna I've written a story in my head,
and I'm gonna tell you whether it was right. We'll see. Okay.
So one year when I was a kid, my dad
was stationed overseas. My mom insisted that we get a
(17:22):
real tree that year. We didn't always sometimes we would
have artificials, sometimes you would have a real one. There
was no rhyme or reason. And we got a real
one that year, and we got it home and we
put it in its little stand with the water, and
we put all the decorations on it, and we even
put some gifts under it because we already had some.
And the next morning we woke up to what I'm
(17:45):
gonna guess was millions of spiders, Yeah, everywhere, all over everything. Yeah. Yeah,
my guest was gonna be bug infestation in the tree. Yes,
And I like spider's fine, but that was overwhelming and
I don't really want to invite them over for Christmas.
They can if they show up in my house, I
will treat them with hospitality and find them a place outside,
(18:08):
but they're not like on the guest list. And a
lot after that, I just remember being like, I will
never have a real tree, and I haven't now the
cat thing. I'm stalling a little bit to talk about
my terrible buying habits, but the cat thing. We had
a funny turn of events, which is that some years back,
(18:31):
I don't know ten, possibly more, not much more, we
had been in our house a few years and I
was like, hey, when we were in our apartment, we
only had like a little the kind you would put
on like a table, like one of those little dinky
two to three foot or things. Yeah, and we'd been like,
maybe we get a tree. And we got a tree
(18:53):
that year, and we decided that we would like test
it by just putting it out without ornaments and seeing
what happened mm hmm. And at the time we had
we have five or six at that point, we had
some cats. And we went to work one day and
we came home and not only was the tree obviously trashed,
(19:14):
but two of the branches were in our bed. Okay.
There was just like I was like, did someone break in?
Like it was so bad? Yeah, yeah, it was so bad.
And it was like, I don't understand what's taking place here.
And I of course fingered the usual suspect and I
was like, you are the bad cat. This is clearly
(19:35):
your doing. But we didn't take the tree down, probably
because we were just like too lazy, m And we
went to work. The next day, we came home and
there was more mayhem. And on the third day we
came home and the culprit was asleep in the trashed
out tree okay, and it was not the one I thought.
(19:55):
It was one of the sweetest cats we've ever had,
how funny. And when I awakened him from his slumber,
which he had had to thread himself through some branches
because so many were missing at that point, like he
had to do acrobatic work to find a place that
would support his weight because he also was not a
tiny cat, and it was not mister Burns. Don't anybody
(20:17):
think it. It was one of our lovely Siamese. And
when I awakened him, it was one of the only
times he was ever insolent, and he looked at me like,
what are you doing? Call the manager like he was
like irritated it me for being mad that he had
destroyed the tree and made a clubhouse. We eventually started
putting up a tree when when those cats, our Siamese
(20:39):
were quite young, then they were only like two, and
when they hit about seven or eight, they had chilled
out a little bit, and so we started putting up
a tree again. And it's been fine. Yeah, And now
we just had the two boys left, and I this
is where I confess to like a problem in my life. Okay, okay.
First of all, I love our Christmas tree. It's per
(21:00):
and it's fun and we put toys on it and
it's great. But I like other colors. And apparently in
a fugue state, which sometimes happens to me, I get
up in the morning and while I'm waiting for my
coffee to be ready, I get on my phone and
I do things that I'm not even aware of and
don't remember. Right, long story short, I now also have
(21:22):
a pink tree and a black tree, and I don't
know where they're gonna go. That's great. We have no
idea where there's those are gonna go. But we'll find
this space somewhere. But it's we're going to have fun. Now.
(21:45):
This brings us to the important grown up part of
the discussion. I did not realize until I was working
on this episode how much vehement arguing has gone on
since the sixties and continues to go on about whether
it is better for the environment to have an artificial
tree or a natural tree. Both sides of the argument
(22:08):
continue to be so completely confident that I don't know
because right, like the various parts, there's more to it.
I'm certainly not going to be able to parse out
the whole thing quickly and casually. But like, obviously, like
the idea of cutting down trees is part of what
people are like, we are destroying a natural resource. Why
(22:30):
would you do that? The earth needs trees. They're being
grown for that purpose though, right, And also like then
you have to throw it away and it becomes a
trash thing. And yeah, there which again that there are
other things that can be done with that. A lot
of places like chip it and use it for mult
or whatever. Yeah, my community has a tree pickup day
(22:53):
that it then mulched. Whereas you know artificial trees, people
are like, well, yeah, but that is part of big industry.
It's creating you know, industrial waste and manufacture. And now
most of the trees you would get in the US
are made overseas. And not only is that like does
that mean we don't necessarily know about all the regulations
(23:15):
around how they're made, but also you have a pretty
significant footprint in terms of transporting those items to homes
in the US, and that is bad. Now there are
still companies in the US that make artificial trees, and
there are people that are like, no, but that has
created a lot of jobs. Listen, there are arguments on
(23:37):
both sides. I just wanted to acknowledge that people argue
about it. Yeah, I the tree that we are using
we bought the year we bought this house, and we
are going to continue using it until it's no longer functional.
Like yeah, like that's how that's going to work. And
(23:59):
occasionally I will see arguments about whether something is really
sustainable in quotation marks that goes into something like the
amount of energy it takes to make a reusable coffee
mug versus the amount of energy it takes to make
a you know, wax lined or whatever paper coffee cup. Right,
And it's like, okay, but did you factor in the
(24:22):
fact that people are going to use that mug that
mug until they die? Right? That's the thing there. There
isn't a lot of good information on usage cases that
extrapolate along like the potential lifetime of such a thing.
(24:43):
We had. The artificial tree that we had for a
long time was the one that I grew up with. Yeah, yeah,
and we inherited it, and frankly, we finally got rid
of of it because and when I say I grew
up with that, I mean that thing was probably made
in maybe nineteen seventy. It has taken on a weird
(25:04):
odor m hm, like not musty, but a unique the
way plastics breaking down start to smell, and it had
started to melt in places when it was around lights
that weren't even necessarily that hot. Yeah, And I was like,
safety gone, Like we have gotten you know, thirty five
(25:24):
years out of history. I think it's okay to say goodbye. Yeah, so, yeah,
I I like the fantasy colors, is my problem? Yeah,
I think that sounds very fun. I love a pig tree.
I love our purple tree very much. Can we talk
briefly about the German pickle situation? Okay, you know about
(25:47):
the pickle right, hiding the pickle in the tree ornaments, right,
which I had always heard. You know, if you go
to Epcot in the Germany pavilion, they'll sell y'all a
pickle ornaments. But I was reading a blog written by
a German person who claims that is belgoney and that
if you ask anybody who is actually from Germany, they'll
be like, we don't know where this pickle thing started.
(26:08):
So that leads me to the question of then is
it a German American thing? I don't know, which is
really why I'm putting this at the end of our discussion,
because I'm putting a call out. Yeah, if you know
the history of the pickle ornaments, you have delivered on
smart orange cats, you have delivered on fabulous personal ghost stories.
(26:30):
Do you know a German person that knows about the
pickle ornament? If you don't know what we're talking about
for context, just as many glass ornaments, you will sometimes
see one that looks like a pickle, and you're probably like,
what is the pick allowed to do with Christmas? Although
now you can find a glass ornament of any Yeah,
here's a cheeseburger. It's a pickle. Same thing, but allegedly
(26:54):
in the tradition that people claim comes from Germany or
possibly German Americans, like the kid that could find the
pickle ornament kind of hidden in the branches of the
tree would like get a special gift or something. And
then sometimes there's the addendum of like the first adult
(27:14):
to spot it will have extra good fortune in the
new year to come. Like there are other things, but
that's the German pickle it just in case anybody listening
had not heard of it before. And I found this
person writing a German blog and claiming they really did
not love the German pickle story because it seemed to
them like a bunch of stuff people in the US
(27:36):
made up. It's not even appropriation, it's what Yeah, So
if you know the real real, if you are from
a German households, I want to know if you know
about the pickle. Yeah, if you're from a German American household.
I want to know if you know about the pickles. Yeah,
I just want to I just want experiential evidence of
(27:56):
actual human beings, right, and not catalogs as correct. Yeah,
I will say I will sometimes see discourse on whatever
app about whether this or that thing actually comes from
a place, and a lot of times it's like, yeah,
(28:20):
that doesn't come from that place. That is something that
has developed within the communities of immigrants from that place
riving in the United States, and that has its own
worth and value one hundred percent one percent, and it does.
I mean, I start to think of it in terms
of like, how could this have played out, and like
(28:44):
at a time when you know, Christmas ornaments also not
cheap for a long time, and even now, like you
can buy cheapy ones, but like nice ones can be
really pricey. And I could see a family being like,
this would be a fun way to add add something
special to our tree that costs next to nothing. Huh.
It will be a fun thing for an hour on
(29:05):
Christmas morning or Christmas Eve or whenever they do their tradition, right.
That's the other thing. One of the things that people
say is the detractor is that the way that story
is told often in the US it is when the
kids wake up on Christmas morning blah blah blah. But
in Germany you don't usually do your gift thing on
Christmas morning. That's a Christmas Eve situation, and so they're like,
that's your first clue that this is wrong. So again
(29:31):
you've delivered on the orange cats that are smart, I believe.
Now now with the German pickle, we are now past Christmas.
So I hope that if you celebrate Christmas, that you
had a very beautiful Christmas that was filled with love
and joy and delicious sugar cookies if you're in Tracy's
(29:52):
and many other families, or other delicious things, because the
best part of Christmas is feasting, in my book, and
that you feels that you've gotten some rest and relaxation
out of the deal. If you are headed into your
weekend right now, I hope you get a little more
of that. And if you're not headed into your weekend,
I still hope that you find some time to recharge
(30:14):
and that you have had great holidays, and that the
new year, which is coming up quickly, will also be good.
We will be right back here tomorrow with the classic episode,
and then up Monday with something brand new. Stuff you
Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(30:38):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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