Whiskey Whitmores: Traditions!

Today I'm joined by Amy for the latest of the Whiskey with the Whitmores episodes of Strive Seek Find.   We discuss  family traditions, how  and why they change and the power they have with children. 

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Transcript

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tradition on tradition. Tradition. Okay, that's as much as I can do on that. Yay. He sings that's all I remember of a song I sang in a musical I was in over 30 years ago. Fiddler on the Roof. But it seems timely welcome to this very special strive seek find a whiskey with the Whitmore's edition. like to welcome in Amy again. petaloo. So, Honey, what are you drinking today? Well, it's interesting that you should ask, because we have this discussion just before we started this about, well, whiskey Whitmore's. It's tradition. We have to drink whiskey and I'm like, but it's in the morning. So we have this discussion of what would what would qualify what would work because we have done whiskey with the Whitmore's where we focused on gin and we did whiskey with a Whitmore we focused on Mohit toes, didn't we? We've done a couple of cocktail hours. Yes. Well, this morning, I am drinking a very nice cup of cinnamon tea, cinnamon tea with just a little bit of Jura in it, which I know all you all all of our straight up Scotch drinkers will just shut her and go What did you do to the Jura? But it is phenomenal. It is a lovely lovely hot toddy for a cold morning. So for clarification we're recording this morning on Christmas Eve 2022. And I am sitting here with old reliable. And in my case, my old reliable Scotch is the one that I cut my teeth on Dalmore 12. And I'm drinking it out of the Del Mar 12 glass I got at the Dalmore distillery 10 years ago. Yeah, the fact I've protected this through three kids. Somewhat a miracle that is I'm struggling a little bit because our original plan for this was to record last night. And we were going to do a while we were talking about traditions. I was going to talk we're going to discuss the Nick Offerman editions of Lagavulin. So that's going to have to wait and it gives me an excuse to get me back on soon. Yep. But today, well, I'm going to take a sip. Today we took the kids downtown. And we looked at the Christmas lights in several inches of new fallen snow. And then we got back and we had oatmeal and homemade cocoa and sent them off to their rooms to go back to the bed so that we could have scotch now in all seriousness so that we could record this episode because we've been trying for a while and they need a little rest before they go to their. Their grandfather's for brunch. What is brunch anyways, let's be honest brunch. Well, apparently brunch is now a tradition. It is something that the kids talk about and look forward to every year that the fact that we go to our Papa's for brunch on Christmas Eve, they look forward to it. And they talk about it. And boy, the year that they were all sick, and we didn't stay and we just popped by to drop off presents, they were so mad at us. But you know, what we've come up with what's been kind of sticking in my mind for the last little bit is, in the last few years, we had to make some alterations in our traditions. And in the last year, we had to make some major alterations and traditions. And we didn't really realize and some of them were staying because we like them. We didn't realize the impact that was going to have until after the fact agreed. So last year, we lost chances dad and our family was split over Thanksgiving and he was at home at his mom's home taking care of her and taking care of the immediate family. And the girls and I were over here and our friends graciously took us in for Thanksgiving and we we made it through the holiday. This year, they became apparently clear that our mashed potatoes are a tradition. Mashed potatoes, hand mashed potatoes with gravy Erica was adamant that she had missed out on that. And we were not going to miss out on that again. And it was it's it's a little thing, but it was important to her, the structure the holiday. That's something that was important to her. And we're seeing it we saw it again with to certain extent with Christmas, we had. Well, even before we get that another one I want to mention with our youngest was having to do with trips home to see my family. Traditionally, we would go over around Christmas, either before the holiday or after, and spend a few days hanging out seeing the grandparents. Last year with we didn't do that, because we just been over the week before to for the memorial service. But that had an impact on the five year old. Sure statement was when we we go to Ashton, we always stay with Uncle Eric on the way. Well, we only ever did. We only ever stayed at Uncle Eric's once. And that was because there was family in town for the memorial. But in her head. That's how we did it. And I'm like, well. So what that got us thinking, we create when you get married, you create family traditions, and they're there. They're a hodgepodge, or compromise, a compromise or a blending of two traditional family traditions, for instance, and it no changes. Because when you and I first got married, we would go to Ashton for Christmas. We used to go over the two of us and spend Christmas and Ashton with your family. But when we had kids, we stopped. We didn't go over there for Christmas anymore. We decided that we wanted Christmas to be at home. And so we've altered our art traditions, and started creating some of our own. And part of that was I left coaching wrestling, because when we were coaching wrestling, I had a very small window of time I could be gone. So we'd run over, spend a little time with my folks then run back so I can be back at practice. That all ended when I left coaching. So it made it easier to shift that tradition. Very true. Let's pause to take a sip and honey with your tea and your whiskey. I did I'm going to just say you've ruined both. What does the Jura add to the flavor of your tea? Okay, first, I'm using a cinnamon tea and it's not a cinnamon and Apple or cinnamon anything else it's like 100% cinnamon tea and a nice good high quality tea. So it is very warm to begin with. And so it is just it's a lovely cup of tea. And the Jura just enhances that flavor. You actually don't taste the whiskey, but you feel the warmth. And so I in a hot toddy. That's kind of what I'm looking for. So when I make a a more traditional hot toddy with lemon and honey, I'm looking for a really well balanced drink that warms and doesn't bite and just has a real both the cinnamon and the lemon have an astringent kind of flavor not enough flavor. What word am I looking for? quality to it. So it's fantastic for just it just kind of warms the cockles of your heart. It's awesome I'm afraid I'm not going to try this because I am not that big a fan of cinnamon. And no, I make a really good hot toddy though you have you like my lemon hot toddies Yeah, about an occasion on occasion. But I'm going to add to this. Amy I caught AMI getting into the the whiskey one day for hot toddies my hot toddies are really good. She really likes them. But when I found her using the Lagavulin 16 for a hot toddy. I'm really good. I almost broke down and cried and said no, no, no, no, no. Don't use that. Here's the list of whiskies you can use on it. And jurors really mine so it's probably wouldn't be on the list unless it was my favorite. She can use the Jura all she wants. It's a good scotch, it's not a favorite, but the lack of will and 16. That's kind of that's my baby drinking it out of the Glencairn. So I don't want to give that up at all. Let's, let's move on to, I should probably talk a little bit about the Domore. Tell us about your donoughmore. Okay, I've said it over and over again. Scotch is experiential, more than just about any other alcohol. When I smell and taste the Scotch I've had before, I'm immediately taken back to the first place I tried it. In this case, I'm sitting on the back porch of our first home solving the world's problems with a friend of mine. And in general, having a great time. It's Highland scotch, it's got a very nice amber color to it. The nose is soft, it does, you're not going to get a lot of iodine, you're not going to get a lot of peed out of the scotch, which makes it a great starter Scotch for me because I had to work my way up to loving those things. And it has a very brown sugary, which is why I like it. And it's I call it old reliable and it always will have a spot on my shelf. Because it is the the one that made me fall in love with the whiskey style. Sorry, gonna take another drink on that. But let's talk about family traditions a little more. Start with movies. Last night we watched a Christmas carol. Which Christmas Carol is very important. It has to be George see Scott 1984 and 85. That's that's the only one Well, occasionally the month that one comes out, but I liked him up at one. That's the one we watch. It is part of my Christmas tradition that I brought to the family. Yes. We also the kids clamor for watching The Grinch every year. Multiple times. Yeah, we ended up watching the Grinch multiple times during the month of November between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. We always try to watch that one. Christmas Eve. We also like to pull out like a Charlie Brown Christmas. We also we haven't done that this year. I know we haven't done that one. White Christmas. We always watch White Christmas when we're decorating the tree. And a special thing we did this year, the Boise area the Boise Little Theater had a showing of a production of White Christmas. So we took the girls to see it and it was phenomenal. It was so neat to watch the stage play versus the movie musical that we've that we love. And so we always watch that. And so the girls know all the songs to that the sisters song and everything else. And then frosty, frosty. We used to watch Rudolph. We still do a little bit but boy the girls have become very vociferous about that one. They it's amazing. As they get older they have started picking up some things that we didn't. Growing up you know, we watched we watched Rudolph we watched Santa Claus is coming to town we watch frosty and we just enjoyed them. I don't remember there being political or sociological undertones but boy, the girls are all up in arms about how Rudolph's treated, Rudolph's been bullied Santas, a Batman those kinds of things. Santa didn't want anything to do with Rudolph until he needed them. And I'm like, You're right. Like you have a point. I can't fault them for any of their observations. That makes a lot of sense. They're just a lot more aware of it then, than we were, I guess. Yep. And let's add to that, with when we grew up, we just assumed those were the movies that you would watch growing up. Yeah. But was example Rudolph came out and 64 Frosty not too long after they're really old movies. They're really old movies. But when we were growing up, we never thought further back. We just thought that's what you did. So that's what always had been done. That was the tradition going back. We assumed our parents had done it. Our grandparents. I don't know this at the age of time. Not sure how they would have done it without television. But there you go. But you have there still that now movies our kids have added that I'm not as fond of the kids watch Home Alone again and again. And I like it. It's just I, it's funny, because I guess another one would be a Christmas story. And I never really got into that one. I've seen it a few times, but it was never in the main rotation for me growing up. You know, and this is the funny thing people argue. And this is an aside, so I'm wondering, if you disagree with me, please leave it in the comments. The if Home Alone is a Christmas movie, and the people seem to treat it as a Christmas movie, right, then Die Hard is a Christmas movie. I've heard that argument. And I have to say that I agree. I agree. But then what other movies should fall under that category? Let's see. Lord of the Rings should be well, Lord, the rings came, often came round around those times doesn't involve Christmas at all. But a lot of people do, as part of their family traditions watch all three of the movies during on Christmas Day, which, if you're watching the extended edition, you're looking at close to 15 hours of movie. I'm going to stress this. I'm a nerd. I'm not that kind of nerd. Let's see what other ones might be. I guess you could? Well, we have a grow goo at the top of our Christmas tree. So maybe does Star Wars fall under that category? Yeah, but Star Wars doesn't have a good Christmas special. I could do an entire episode on the Star Wars Christmas special at some point. I probably will. But now, not now. Because I want notes. When I eviscerate that debacle of the that I remember, it was bad enough. My folks showed it to me when at the time it was on television. And I'm probably five or six years old. I remember looking at my dad say this is not good debt. They're screwing this up. And there's a reason George Lucas has never put it out. So let's, let's move on from movie so we got those movie traditions that kids have set up and associated with versus what we did. What about? Well, let's talk about the Christmas tree since we said but at the top of our Christmas tree. Oh, that's a good point. Kroger is new this year. I thought it would be funny. And the kids were delighted. We've got this little little Yoda character at the top of our Christmas tree. So for those of you who don't know who grow goo is it's a little baby Yoda from Mandalorian and I, I of course, not going to spend money on an ornament or something like that. So I borrowed Amelia is grow goo doll and zip tight it tight at the top of the tree. Yes. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen. I read it and we pinned a little ornament into the ceiling but then our five year old was jumping on her bed upstairs and the the ornament crashed. So Greg, whoo. You know, he's still working on his force powers. But so what we do we Okay, two things here how we get our tree how we decorate our tree. We have many friends that do seen trees. They're gorgeous. They're gorgeous. Our tree is collected collected, which is what I grew up with. Same here. Yeah. And it's a natural tree we go every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, get a tree. Get it put up because we're running that time of year. So we get it up. We put it up and we try and enjoy it for the whole month. Since we can we can now that's such a different experience than what I grew up with. Because when I grew up the tradition was we didn't spend money on a tree. There were pine trees about a mile from our house. And if you watch the reel of me going snowshoeing, about two weeks ago, you can see some of that area that's just gorgeous. And how we got the tree up there varied at different points in my life when I was little. We had an old snow jet and we dead took the the hood off a 1950s Pontiac and we called it the crazy sled and bolts and everything we just held on for dear life we snow machined up, cut the tree, put it in it and then snow machine back with the kids riding on the under a tree on the on the hood holding the tree in place. Gotcha. Later on. It became after we had gotten perched in horses and built a sled old school sled. Sleigh I should say in this case. We broke trail with the horses and pulled a sleigh up and got it that way. Wow. We cut our tree. We brought it it was a big deal. We never spent a dime on On one, but it was powerful. But that's not where we live. Or the time for it, not the time, not just the timeframe. But the pace of play we live in, right? We, we didn't go out and get our own tree. But I remember our grandparents did. And we were the tree was always up by the time we made it to our grandparents. So we were never part of that experience. But I remember growing up, we had a real tree. But then we opted for a fake one that was so that we could put it up. As soon as as Thanksgiving was put away, we could put it up and enjoy it and not worry about it. My dad and my brother were were had some allergies, pine allergies. And so it helped with that. And my mom enjoyed having it up and decorated for as long as she could and so, but we had an eclectic tree that had all sorts of different ornaments and my brother and I collected ornaments. And we've kind of done that we've I brought my collection when we got married and you brought some and your mom sent some and then we started collecting ornaments. For a while, we would try to pick out a family ornament each year. And that kind of fell by the wayside just a little bit because life just gets busy. And finding one thing to one theme to the year get almost impossible as yeah older, finding one ornament to represent an entire year. I would love at some point to do like maybe picture ornaments I tried a year or two ago, to create a cube. I think I used Walgreens and tried to create a cube that had pictures on four sides. Because I thought all this could be perfect. But it it just didn't turn out the way that I'd hoped. And so I think eventually I'm going to have to ModPodge my own. So, all this, what's the final tradition you'd like to hit on today? Where or another tradition? Oh? How about? How about family dinners? That's a good choice. You got it. Okay. Um, so growing up. We always kept Christmas Day Christmas dinner. Just the family. And just as at home. I don't remember in particular a lot. But your family sure had a lot of family traditions wrapped around the family meal. Because of pace of play more than anything. We were used to eating and getting out and it frustrated. My father and mother to no end that they could spend all day in the kitchen and then come out and we'd eat it in 15 minutes and be gone. So we started probably when I was 1012 years old. Fun doing meat. We had steak. We had mushrooms, we had chicken, we have you guys had lobster and crab, those were later editions. After I was out of the house prep more more than likely Oh, they they'd have shrimp. But lobster and crab didn't come until after I'd moved out. Oh, okay. Getting me off. The bankroll probably helped. But the was good because there was a lot of time together. And as we got older, and we were all working, that was powerful, because it was time that we had to interact. Because like a lot of us, this is pretty video game, obviously. But everybody would go read their books or watch football or whatever else and discussions weren't happening. So it just added to that. That's a neat tradition. That's not one that we have continued at our house, though, partly because the kids fondue is very difficult to pull off when your kids are small. And so we've had a wide spread of kids, our youngest is five and our oldest is 14. And so we've had a little kid in the house for you know, 15 years. But so what do we do instead, we in an effort to keep either of us from slaving in the kitchen all day, we go with smoked meats, we love the barbecue, low and slow and then when it's ready, we throw it on and eat. Traditionally, it's just the immediate family for Christmas dinner. Like everything seems to be being reevaluated at this point. But it's nice because puts us all together on a day where it's all about family. And I know there's a ton more and different holidays and different event life events we could point to but this So what was on our mind today? So, dear, what can we take away from? What were our traditions right now that sometimes the traditions that we have that we think that we have are not necessarily the ones that the kids will take away? Oh, great. Erica and the mashed potatoes is a great example. Right? I never would have thought that that would have qualified but that qualifies for her. That's huge for her. Oh, yes, she lectured me. lengthily lengthily on it. And made sure that I knew that that was important to Christmas as well as Thanksgiving. Yeah, we don't have mashed potatoes any other time of year apparently. Another thing we can look at is you can't be too inflexible in your traditions, they're important. But being able to let them shift and grow organically, evolve, evolve, is what makes it become what it is. It's what makes it memorable. Because if we held on to exactly what our grandparents did, we'd still be eating things like tomato aspic, or, to quote Steve Rogers in the Winter Soldier, boiled meats. So you know, the ability to let it shape and grow is pretty huge. Overall, like most things, you're doing it, in part with nostalgia, in part with love. And letting it grow organically, as you said, is what keeps that level live and keeps the keeps the kids involved keeps them actively engaged in it because they it gives them ownership. And they certainly want that. Yes. All right. Hey, honey, thank you for coming on. It's been a long time since we've done a whiskey. No life has been keeping us very on our toes. So and to all of you who are listening, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Things, all that stuff. If you have a tradition you want to share, or an idea coming out of traditions. Let's hit us up on the Facebook group. Strive seek find group on Facebook, or email me at J chance with more@gmail.com or find me on Twitter @chancewhitmore5 now, until next time, my friends keep seeking