This whole episode is a segment and gets quite philosophical. Celebrate us (but don't look at us!) as we describe how we eat on birthdays and holidays. We are anti-cinnamon roll and pro-scone as we bemoan demagnetized fridges and promote Eating Kingly. Spilled Milk Podcast: Now with extra air!
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Molly 0:00
Hi I'm Molly And I'm Matt and this is spilled milk the show where we cook something delicious. Eat it all and you can't have any
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:10
and today we're talking about celebration food, which is the food eaten in celebration Florida the planned community of The Walt Disney Company
Molly 0:19
believe is that really what I think so? Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, no really what we're talking about today is like what you eat for like family celebration?
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:30
Well let's let's this is this was sparked by listener email. So you can think of this entire episode as a spilled mail segment great.
It was suggested by listeners mission Maddie who wrote a growing up in our family when it's your birthday, you get to choose what to eat for lunch and dinner. Breakfast is usually a family tradition of two eggs cooked any way you want with whatever you want, preferably made for you by someone else. Well, it's your birthday, you can cook your own egg. However, dinner is the birthday person's choice. My selection from about four years old on onwards was Chinese style lobster noodle, which has become my daughter selection as well. It's not about the lobster. It's about the noodle. That sounds great. So we wondered what other families have is their celebration food, which could be to celebrate anything, not just a birthday and isn't just cake.
Molly 1:19
Okay, I love this. This was really this made me think
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:24
this like I went places philosophically that I didn't expect it to expect. Yeah,
Molly 1:29
I want to start out talking about birthdays. Yeah, because it made me realize that we don't have a lot of birthday traditions in my family. Like neither my family of origin nor like the the family that I have made as an adult, like the family that you've sculpted, there's, there's really like, No, I can't think of a single thing that we always do on a birthday.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:52
No, I don't think we particularly have that either. Although, like, it's certainly like getting to choose what you eat and not having to do chores. Those are kind of the birthday traditions, interesting. chores. Like Like, I usually I usually wash the dishes after dinner and if it's my birthday wife the show Laurie will wash the dishes. Okay,
Molly 2:11
okay. Okay, that's, I don't even think we go that far in my household like I true. I mean, that's going pretty far. No, no, but I truly think that there is like nothing. That I mean, when I think about like things that we do that are like special on birthdays, other than like, presence or whatever. The things that come to mind are only like the big and sort of rare occasions like yeah, I remember in 2017 I wanted to go hiking for my birthday. So ash and I both took off work and we went and hiked the snow Lake Trail here in Washington State.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:45
The Spoiler spoiler, right, there's snow leg.
Molly 2:50
Good one, good one. And then in 2018, it was my 40th birthday. So I we actually had like a big party. But otherwise, like, I can't even think of something that I always eat or like something that always is done for me or like, we're definitely not like a breakfast in bed family. No, that sounds terrible. Yeah, no. And the other thing is, is and here's something that I find myself thinking about, and maybe you do, too, which is that I am far and away the main cook in my household. Sure me too. I like the way I make things. Yeah. So I don't want my spouse to make my coffee. Even on sure my birthday. I think that there there are certain recipes that actually I might be like Ash, would you make this thing that you're good at making? So just like because I enjoy it, and then I also don't have to cook. But I think what's really tricky, and maybe I'm just a control freak or something. But I think maybe what I would want is maybe more freedom to do the things that I want to do for myself. Oh, sure. As opposed to maybe having somebody do things for me.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:54
Yeah. So like, I keep thinking of more celebration foods that we have that I didn't think of when I was like putting stuff on the agenda. So like when I was a kid,
Molly 4:04
are we talking birthday still here? Yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:07
Are we moving on to holiday? I'm gonna move on to holidays pretty quick. Right? Okay. So for my birthday when I was a kid, I would always want hot lips pizza, which was a local pizza chain in Portland. I would get and I still get some often like want a pizza like this from Paul Yachi which is like a local chain in Seattle. But I would get pepperoni sausage, green pepper, mushroom, onion. Okay, would be a good pick. Yeah. And those are kind of still my favorite pizza toppings. Yeah, yeah. So that was that was always always a big hit. And this episode is coming out like Right, like a week after my birthday and a week before mine. Yes. So if you see us on the street, give us pizza celebrate us. So yeah, if you see me walking by and the tear gets in my eye, look away.
Molly 4:55
And then celebrate. Don't look at it. Don't look
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:59
at the tear. was okay what else bad try that so I would for sure be on cold.
Molly 5:05
I'm struggling to remember was Chicago. Okay. Oh Peters Tutera
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:09
Yeah, I think it was Peter. It might have been after Peter Sutera left the band and there was another guy who sounded like Peter Sutera. Okay, I think that might have been the case I'm not sure.
Molly 5:18
Okay, so let's talk about holidays. Yeah, like celebration traditions around holiday.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:25
Okay. We always have Cornish pasties for Thanksgiving. I've talked about it on the show a million times before,
Molly 5:30
okay. My family does have like, you know, we have a more conventional Thanksgiving, complete with the conventional things. We have particular recipes we like, but I wouldn't call that like celebration food, right. I am thinking though, about Christmas. All right. So my Aunt Tina, my mother's twin sister who lived in Northern California. I always associate this with her the idea of having Dungeness crab on Christmas Eve. Sure. So even though the Dungeness Spit and Dungeness crab I associate much more with Washington state than with Northern Northern California. When I was growing up in Oklahoma, like we did not get fresh Dungeness chirps, right. And so it felt like a really big special thing when we would spend Christmas in California and have Dungeness crab on Christmas Eve. And now that I live on the West Coast and have for Wow, 21 years this fall, I always have Dungeness crab if not on Christmas Eve, sometimes on New Year's Eve, okay. But always,
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:32
our Christmas Eve tradition is homemade tamales. And we almost almost always do pork and red chili. And we make a large number of them that will that will be like at least three meals worth and use. I think we usually eat them on Christmas Eve and then again sometime during the day on Christmas. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's a lot of work. And it's always pays off.
Molly 6:55
And do you feel like your tamale technique has improved a lot?
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:58
Kind of No, because we only do it once a year. Like I think I like it. I think it probably has, but it's sort of hard to tell. Yeah, yeah. So I'm still not good at spreading the masa on the on the husks.
Molly 7:09
I know. I feel like last October we did a dumpling night with with some friends of ours where we made two different types of dumplings, and we made like hundreds of them. And they were so ugly. I mean, they were terrible. They weren't we were making like sharp stickers. Basically.
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:27
I'm good at folding this.
Molly 7:29
I bet you are. I bet you are. But it made me realize like God if we did this every October I don't even know if we'd get better because it would still only be once a year right?
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:37
High Intensity Interval Training.
Molly 7:40
Yes, that's okay. Okay, another thing that we always do at Christmas and that now I do because Jun loves it so much is I make cinnamon rolls. And you know, I don't love cinnamon rolls. I really don't I
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:53
love sintered when they're when they're good and gooey like
Molly 7:57
fuck. I make cinnamon rolls that I really like with like a cream cheese frosting. I think the dough is pretty good. June loves them. Brandon loves them. Ash loves them. I don't really care
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:08
if it were up to me. Are you happy? Because you're because your people are happy.
Molly 8:12
I am happy because my people are happy. If it were up to me, I would have scones, which is something that my sister kind of started a tradition of scones on Christmas morning. It sounds good. But nobody in my family likes scones as much as I do. So I'm screwed stuck with these cinnamon roll lovers.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:31
I like scones. You could you could come over and mix Gus for me. Okay. Okay. So we have a dinner calendar that we've been keeping for years and years just on our Google Calendar. So I can look back like probably 10 years and see what we had for dinner on any given night. So I was able to look back and see that. So for Lori's birthday this year, we visited December at college and ate an excellent fried chicken restaurant in Bellingham called Bantam that we really like. For December's birthday. Last year. We had beast bistro night featuring beef pork and yum. I don't I don't remember what else but that was the that was the star. For my birthday. Last year we had taco salad and the year before that. I think we were on the spilled milk retreat and you made cut you a Pepe. That sounds right. That was great.
Molly 9:12
That was a that was a really good food retreat. We did green chili cheeseburgers the first night had to catch a Pepe on your birthday.
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:19
Yeah, we have. I think we do birthday pizza a lot. And this would be like takeout pizza. Yeah. Okay. And I may be conflating two birthdays. But I think the most epic birthday eating we've ever done was for December's birthday in Tokyo in 2019. And you Molly were present for part of it. So we had breakfast at Mr. Donut. Yep, lunch at CoCo Ichiban. Curry, curry chain, and Okonomiyaki. Village for yes. So these were all December's pics and we were like, yep, we could do all that in one day. And we did. It was amazing.
Molly 9:53
I love that. I yeah, I don't think I'm ever gonna keep a dinner calendar the way that you do You although I don't know why not because I aspire to it, but I just don't think I'm gonna get around to it. That said, I do like the idea of having a place where I can see what we did on birthdays because I, so I adore Christmas. And what I adore about Christmas are those twitting things in a tear are the traditions. Like I find Christmas day itself to be kind of a letdown. But I love the like lead up to Christmas, the anticipation, the traditions, the caroling, all that stuff. You're always going over the chimney and looking up there to see if anyone's coming down. That's right, I just can't wait. But I wonder if I could cultivate that same kind of anticipation around traditions and things at other times of the year. If only I could like remember what we did the year before
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:46
barley. That is a fucking brilliant segue to the thing. I was gonna say no, shame proud of Oh, good. Okay,
Molly 10:51
what are you gonna say? Okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:53
so, back in 2020 a year you may remember. I don't remember exactly. I wish I wish my wife the show. Laurie was here to like, Tell tell exactly what her friend said. Or friend's kid said, our friendship. Dorsa had been like cooking like good dinners at home because like it was a pandemic, everyone was at home. She was like doing grocery orders and like just making everyone's favorites because what else you're going to do? And one of her kids said, Mom, it seems like we're really eating kingly lately. And we love this so much that like, we immediately like incorporated this into our vocabulary. And really, I think have like kind of stuck with the idea of eating kingly ever since then, that like, you know, life is short, and like, the shit could go down at any time. Why not be like eating your favorites most of the time? Yes. And so that's what we kind of like without, like, you know, being like, dogmatic about it. Like, that's what I try and do is like, you know, cook things that are that are people's favorites. Yeah, so because of that, there isn't like much of a difference between like, like celebration food as something you look forward to, and like everyday food, because like, you know, December and I had mapo tofu like that I made for dinner the other night, which is probably the best thing that I make and was like, we're not gonna get better food than this anywhere else. It's true.
Molly 12:12
And I think I mean, if I can, like talk about this from like, a little bit of a serious angle for a second, I want some of it to is that that I know that both you and I have have and continue to work hard to divest from diet culture. And, and I think, too, that at least for me, divesting from diet culture also means like, not depriving myself. And so therefore, every day has elements of what I think might have been celebration foods in my child's sack, right?
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:43
So I've been I've been realizing this year that like, I sort of like, like Laurie and I went to went to Tokyo in spring. And, you know, we did an episode about it. And we had a wonderful time. And what I'm about to say is like the very definition of a first world problem, which is that we had such a nice time just spending two weeks in Tokyo that every day since we got back like man I think I would share would be happier if we were like on vacation in Tokyo right now instead of at home doing like regular like ever day to day stuff. Like our life here is excellent. Like it's fine. That's sort of like how vacations work. I think there's no
Molly 13:18
Oh, yeah, I think that's like baked in vacation.
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:21
But so I don't ever want to like get into that situation with food where I'm like, you know, I can't wait until like sometime in the future when I get to eat my favorite food again. Yes, yeah. Although we're taking December back to to college, at the beginning of September are like right around right around the time you're hearing this episode. And we're going for bistro night at a bistro in Bellingham that December it I went to before that was so good. And I really excited about that.
Molly 13:49
But I want to clarify too, that what I think that is is like giving yourself things to look forward to Yeah, which is I think part of living well. We should turn this life that is otherwise can be quite like mundane and repetitive. Right? So we have to give ourselves things to look forward to. But it doesn't mean that you're going to deprive yourself of tasty food until then. Right?
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:10
Exactly. Yeah. So we need to turn this episode into a best selling self help book. Oh,
Molly 14:15
great. Let's call it eating kingdom, eating kingly.
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:18
It's gonna be one of those books where there's like one, like pithy aphorism on every page, so we don't have to work too hard.
Molly 14:24
Oh, I thought you were gonna say there's gonna be one pithy after aphorism. But we're going to make a whole book out of it. Well, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:29
mean, yes, of course.
Molly 14:32
Anyway, no, it's not to get preachy, but I but I do preachy? No, but I do think about this, because I think that for me as a child, celebration foods were often things that I didn't have on a regular basis, right. Yeah. I mean, this is inherently what celebration food is. I think most of the time, it's special stuff. But yeah, for me as an adult I it's not aligned. I've been interested in drawing owing
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:00
What if we called the book make every day a celebration? Oh wow,
Molly 15:04
that's brilliant. Before Yes.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:07
Anyway What if we called it bloom where you're planted?
Molly 15:10
I love that. Oh my god we should
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:12
totally make totally trade.
Molly 15:15
Oh let's make fridge magnets
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:17
yes let's make tissue bridges have been getting less magnetic lately have you noticed this? I don't mean I don't mean like my fridge has been like slowly losing its magnetism over time I think like I feel like people want like stainless steel appliances that are totally true like late it's been happening for a while now it just started today oh okay I just I've identified the trend anyway trend spotter I love
Molly 15:37
this question. Yes, Mitch and Maddie because it really made me think about like what is celebration food and and what do I want celebration food to be you know, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:49
mean, I think I think sort of where we're coming down is like we want celebration food to be like different enough to to like mark the celebration and be it'd be a tradition, but not like better food that you only get to you only get to enjoy like the really good food a couple times a year.
Molly 16:05
Yeah, well said.
Matthew, we've got some spilled mail
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:24
it's from listener Megan, who writes, does your nighttime snack slash dessert change seasonally? I've noticed that certain nighttime snacks that I favor in the Fall Winter tea cookies, crunchy snacks like pretzels just don't sound as good to me in the summer. Right now. I'm all about ice cream, ice cream bars, sparkling water and popcorn. It makes sense, of course because of the change in temperature. But I wondered if anyone else has the same thanks for the show. Listener? Megan.
Molly 16:45
That's a great question. And it's interesting. I love for one thing that listener Megan includes both like sweet and savory. Yeah, in her evening snack repertoire. For me, the short answer is it doesn't change seasonally. I would just say I go through phases like right now there's a particular chocolate bar I'm really into that is the Tonys choco lonely sea salt and almond.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:09
You know the the story behind that name because I don't I don't
Molly 17:13
June, June asks me at least once a month, what the story is, and I don't know. Anyway, I think that other brands have dark chocolate with almond and sea salt can either be like too salty, or the size of the almond chunks are wrong. In this case, it's all perfect. And I friggin love this bar of chocolate. So right now or maybe for like the last two months. I've really been in a rut with that. But then I'll go through an ice cream period where I have ice cream every single night for like a month. Yeah. And then I'll kind of fall off of that. So for me, it's not so much seasonal, although I do definitely relate to having tea at night in certain seasons and not others
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:57
like that. Yeah, so yeah, I would say mine does not vary seasonally that much. Although I certainly enjoy like a like a fruity popsicle in the summer and I'm not going to get a fruity popsicle in the winter. Especially like those what are the ones you know, you know that one brand that like tastes a little more like fruit than like the popsicle and shine shine? Yes, the one the one that was created by Soundgarden.
Molly 18:21
Oh, no, what I was gonna say is that well, I have a question actually. Yeah, does does what you want as your snack slash dessert. Does it vary throughout the day? Like for instance, I would never have a popsicle a fruit popsicle for dessert at night. Oh, I often do I would have a fruit popsicle after lunch big time. Yeah, I might do both. No, I never would choose it after dinner after dinner I would want chocolate or if I had something that involves fruit it would need to be like a fruit like cobbler or something like that.
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:54
Yeah, I would say like my most frequent snack is is not and especially hazelnuts. I try and keep those those on hand at all times any time of year. Ice cream is definitely a year round thing around here. There are some cereals that I really enjoy snacking dry so if those if that's in the house, I will snack on those like, like Frosted Flakes certainly frosted and Corn Chex Corn Chex is great, dry snack, whereas whereas I think I enjoy frosted Mini Wheats a lot as a as a milk cereal but it's will tear up your mouth if you eat him dry. Yeah, it'll
Molly 19:32
really mess with you. But I have eaten a lot of dry frosted Mini Wheats. Sure. I remember actually on on our honeymoon, Brandon and I ate like boxes of dry frosted Mini Wheats while driving through BC. Wow, I know. It's so sexy. No, but I distinctly remember being in like a fairy line like along the Sunshine Coast or something like, like dig in handfuls frosted Mini Wheats out of the box.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:57
You know what listener Megan says? I mentioned sparkling water one thing that I have been having recently because it's in the house and because it's been hot and like I would never have in the winter is Laurie I think I've mentioned this on a recent episode got me a little thing of like drops of concentrated Tropical Punch Kool Aid. And it's this tiny bottle that contains an infinite amount of the Tropical Punch Kool Aid mix. I I've gotten like 25 glasses out of it. What does
Molly 20:28
what did she buy this for? Like so that you could just she know you really like like
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:31
I said, Because I said, I said, You know what I haven't had in a long time Tropical Punch Kool Aid. I wonder if it's still the same. And she's like, well, I will get you some and we'll find out and then she brought home this like concentrated sugar free and I was like, This is gonna be the same. It was exactly the same. Wow. And so I have been putting that into into seltzer. Her club soda. That's a good pretty good when it's when it's hot. I am starting to get sick of the flavor of Tropical Punch Kool Aid and I think that phase will be over if and when I ever finished the bottle.
Molly 21:02
Well, I have good news for you. I bet there is nothing in that bottle. That's gonna go bad and you could probably just keep it in the fridge until next summer. That
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:08
is that is a good point. Yeah, yeah.
Molly 21:11
Speaking of of snacks, yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:12
What's your snack it? Hey, watch your snacking. Daddy. Gotta tell me what your snack in. Or I'll release the Kraken. So what's your snack in
Molly 21:26
the speaking of like diet culture. So our household has been buying a lot of rice cakes lately. Cakes are tasty. Rice cakes are so delicious. But there's nothing that makes me feel like I don't know like somebody's gonna think I'm on a diet. Yeah, having rice cakes in my grocery cart
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:42
may be unfair to rice cakes, but also probably they are marketed that way so maybe not that unfair.
Molly 21:47
Well, so everyone in my household probably including Gilbert though I haven't let him try. And Ames has not tried them yet. Loves rice cakes with peanut butter. Jun also loves rice. Okay, spread with butter, which is a fantastic idea. Yeah, I'm not into that. But that's because I'm afraid of butter. Okay. Ash makes like a stack of rice cakes bread with peanut butter. plinking how big a stack like for rice. Wow. And like puts it in a Tupperware and takes it to work as like their snack in addition
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:15
to take they like like take it week later.
Molly 22:19
Take the layers off,
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:20
right. You know, I was imagining a stack of four and then like trying to like fit their mouth around. Like a big bag of rice case.
Molly 22:29
So our favorite is the Lundeberg like thin stackers. Those are it's a really good product. However, we haven't been able to find those in a while so I've been buying Quaker lightly salted and they are extremely like puffy. Like it's a really delicate rice cake. mouthfeel okay, like really airy. Yeah, I know what you mean even more so than usual. So yeah, take some
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:54
day on the package was there like a starburst and said like it now even airier now that we're gonna pop now with
Molly 23:00
extra air. Anyway, and we use a jiff natural peanut butter, which I love. All right. So there you go,
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:09
what am I snack in? Obviously, it's hazelnuts.
Molly 23:11
Okay. Hey, it's my week to do an album Wow.
I wanted to mention a piece of writing by local Seattle writer, Angela Garbus. This was in the Washington Post in early August. So. And it is a piece about her decision about maybe seven months ago now to get sober from alcohol and what she described as pills. What I really loved about it is she wrote about the phenomenon that is so common among people. I know that many of us started drinking a lot more during COVID Sure, for all kinds of reasons. And that even though even though we're no longer in lockdown, the habit has been hard to break. And for instance, we lost Rachel Marshall here in Seattle, due to liver failure as a result of alcoholic alcoholism, that was exacerbated by COVID. And so what I really loved is Angela Garbus, who's a wonderful writer, also a wonderful reporter. The way that she wrote about this really vulnerably particularly writing about like the length that she found herself going to to, to continue this habit and keep it secret. And it was just really relatable. I think I think that there are countless people in my life who I don't know about who will be benefited by this, like people who I don't even know that they're struggling. And so I just really feel like she did a public service. had to put herself out there so vulnerably and in such a really vital and life saving way.
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:06
Yeah, I think I think probably there are times when we could do a better job on this show, which which does you do alcohol as a subject sometimes of like making making it clear like how, normalizing not drinking, yeah, like that, that is 1,000%. Okay not to drink and that this should be considered like a totally normal thing that you run into all the time, not like a weird thing.
Molly 25:29
I know, it's been really refreshing. It's, it's been interesting for me to notice that when you know, because I know a lot of people who are not drinking, it's been so refreshing in many ways to notice that my mind doesn't automatically go to thinking, Oh, they had like a quote unquote, problem. Or to pathologizing. Right, because I do think that it's so much more common now. And so happily, more common for people to to not be drinking. And anyway, yeah, I very much related to what Angela wrote in this piece in The Washington Post, just in the way that it is so easy to have something become a habit. Yeah, yeah. Especially with the world we've been living in for the past few years. It's so easy to, to just want to like treat ourselves. And in the end, I know that I'm really glad to be thinking more about the ways that I treat myself so that I can make just different decisions now that I have more choices, because we're not in lockdown.
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:38
Yeah, I'm thinking about, like, really exercising for the first time in a long time.
Molly 26:43
Yeah, ya know, I've been trying to exercise a lot more this summer, because I just I love to walk. And I am much more willing to do so in the summer. So
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:53
I'm more willing to drink. Tropical lunch. Cool. Yeah.
Molly 26:57
Anyway, so yeah, so we'll link to that article. If you haven't read it yet. Please go read it. I've also noticed that the Washington Post often uses paywalls. Sure, but I have not found that this piece is paywalled. And I wonder if that is on purpose, because it's now public service that she wrote this piece. So anyway, thanks to Angela Garbus for writing this and go check it out. It's on the Washington Post. It was published on August 2.
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:26
All right. And we'll link to that in the show notes. Our producers have the circuit tele you already know about Molly's and my stuff. You know how to rate and review a podcast. You know where to find us on Reddit, but
Molly 27:36
we'll tell you anyway,
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:37
it's everything spelled melk.reddit.com.
Molly 27:39
Thanks for listening to the show. Until next time, Celebrate good times. Come on. Celebrate good times.
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:46
Come on. I'm Matthew Amster-Burton. Molly whites and I think that was pretty fun
until next time, we're like a celebration for your face. Oh, now
Molly 28:07
we are. We're we're done.