Main Piece: My mom is part Irish and learned from her family to eat corned beef and cabbage on every St. Patrick’s Day. I eat it now every year because I like it, but I guess there’s some tradition to it. My wife isn’t Irish, but she adopted the tradition and kept it in our family, and so every year she cooks us corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

Context: This tradition was done every year on St. Patrick’s Day while SR was growing up, and still continues now with SR’s family.

Background: SR’s mother is Irish, and grew up in a household that practiced many Irish traditions, and so she passed a lot of these onto her children. SR doesn’t feel particular ties to this tradition, but he likes the was the meal tastes, so he continues to practice it.

Analysis: This is particularly interesting because SR doesn’t practice this due to the Irish tradition: he eats corned beef and cabbage because he loves corned beef and cabbage! It is interesting to see how folklore and traditions can manifest, even when someone doesn’t think about carrying it on, or doesn’t have a reason for carrying it on. SR has passed this tradition to his wife, who never ate the meal before and who now cooks and eats it every year; even without meaning to, or without caring about the tradition, SR managed to keep it going.

Main Piece: KK: Every Easter, we eat this thing called “Eggs a la Goldenrod”… and it’s a made up name haha. And it’s basically… biscuits with, okay sorry, first, it’s a process, so first you boil the eggs and color them and hide them because its Easter, and once you find the eggs you crack them, take the shells off, and separate the yolks from the whites in two separate bowls and you make an egg gravy out of the whites, and then you mash up the… it’s a hard-boiled egg so you mash up the hard yolk so it’s kinda sprinkly kinda egg yolk. Then you have to put it together a certain way so you open a biscuit in half, on the bottom, you put in the egg gravy and then you put the yolks on top, and then you can either have sausage on it or on the side, and then hot sauce on it, and this is how we always use eggs in Easter. And it’s because my mom’s family was really really big, they had like five kids, so they had to do something with all the eggs! I don’t know where my grandma learned it, but my mom learned it from her that you basically make a brunch that is ONLY EGGS!

Context: This dish is made every single Easter with KK’s family.

Background: KK and her family love to cook, and have a whole slew of recipes they tend to cook with each  other, but this was the very first thing to come to her mind for something that was a traditional meal in their household.

Analysis: Upon further research, KK and I discovered that Eggs a la Goldenrod is a fairly common dish, and other people have made it too! KK thought it was just because her mom’s family was huge, and they had to use all the eggs that were made for Easter, but lots of people make this dish! Because KK’s version of this dish involves her family’s size, and using their colored Easter eggs for it, it is still a piece of folklore.