Nog

So, I was reading this post a little while ago, which includes a couple of wacky nog(g) recipes, and thinking about the fact that I don't really consider eggnog a festive drink. I actually really like the combination of flavors, though maybe more as ice cream or a base for a custard pie. Or cream puff filling! Cream puffs with eggnog pastry cream filling! I should invent those. They sound splendid.

But as a beverage, eggnog will always seem the epitome of wholesomeness to me. See, my mother got it into her head at some point when I was a kid that I didn't like eggs and she thought eggs were something that growing children needed to consume. So on Sunday mornings, she'd put milk and a raw egg or two and some sugar and vanilla in the blender, call it eggnog and I'd drink it on the drive to church out of a plastic mug shaped like a clown's head that had a hat-shaped lid with a hole for a straw. I haven't had it in a solid two decades (and am not exactly chomping at the bit to recreate it) but that's Eggnog to me. Adding cream and booze and serving it at parties just seems ... weird. Like suggesting a rousing game of strip Chutes and Ladders.