Eggs, Milk and Whatever Hooch You Have

It's raining and I'm trapped indoors with 2 teenage boys and a four year old. Partly as an excuse to get out of the house and partly as pure survival instinct, I found myself at the grocery store checkout line with a box of brownie mix, a carton of eggnog and a large bottle of Kool-aide's older sister, coconut flavored rum. I don't know if it's this heavenly concoction of mine or plain ignorance, but I've been unable to answer any questions from my kids about what the hell eggnog is. Now thanks to Nanna Rognvaldardottir (daughter of Rognvaldar), I know more about eggnog than I do about rum, which I thought was a lot.

Because in the old days nobody had a refrigerator, only those wealthy enough to have a farm had milk and eggs. In England, where I have first hand experience of the difficulty finding something decent to eat, big estate owners with plenty of both milk and eggs used to make a drink called Posset. It was a mixture nog, which is an old English word for a strong beer, eggs and milk. Yikes. Beer, eggs and milk? Sounds like a recipe for the I Love to Fart Cookbook I once had. Anyway, as migration happens, Posset or Eggnog, has traveled around the world and is now wearing many new dresses. In most of America, rum replaced the beer as it was the most affordable booze at the time of its introduction, except in New Orleans where they of course use bourbon. The American south also makes a version with wine called Syllabub. In Puerto Rico its called Conquito, where they also use rum and yummy coconut milk. In Mexico they call it Rompope, again with rum and lot's of Mexican cinnamon. In Peru they celebrate the holidays with Biblia con Pisco made with brandy. The Germans make something eggnoggy called Biersuppe, or beer soup (of course). Iceland has a hot dessert that resembles eggnog but has no alcohol. I don't think that counts.

Also in my search for Eggnog intelligence, I found a unintelligent video on YouTube where some college looking kids were doing the old beer bong thing with eggnog. Apparently the objective was for everyone to then have a puking contest, giving the best puker a giant trophy.
I just can't say enough about that, so I won't.
Cheers!