Usually I’m very against Christmas products coming out before Halloween and my birthday (November 29th, in case you were all wondering). Besides my birthday, Halloween is my favorite holiday. So when Christmas stuff starts intruding on Halloween’s time, I get upset. Every holiday deserves it’s own time and isn’t it enough that we obsess over Christmas from Black Friday all the way until Christmas Eve? That said, this year I am making an exception for eggnog!
Usually I don’t see stores carrying eggnog until Thanksgiving and then it’s gone by early February, if you are lucky enough to find a store that carries it that long. It’s just not a long enough season for me to get my yearly fill of this thick, fatty, sweet delicious treat. So last night when I was doing some grocery shopping at Wegman’s, I was thrilled to see they had already put out their eggnog. It was “Upstate Farms” brand of eggnog, which isn’t my preferred brand, but it will suffice for now. They carry a “light” eggnog, which is the one I bought. I can’t taste any difference in terms of richness and fat content. This brand seems to have a little added nutmeg, which is a bit overwhelming.
My favorite brand of eggnog is “Hood,”my New England friends know what I’m talking about! In the past few years, Hood has started making flavored eggnog, such as cinnamon, pumpkin, and sugar cookie. While I’ve never had the cinnamon eggnog, I’ve had the pumpkin eggnog and it’s kind of gross. For starters, the pumpkin eggnog is a thick milky orange color, which is a little unsettling. The only drinks I like to see orange colored are orange juice or carrot juice. The flavor isn’t that great either . If I remember correctly, it tastes too strongly of cinnamon and nutmeg. So you should just skip the pumpkin flavor. The sugar cookie eggnog, however, is maybe the greatest idea to ever hit the eggnog market. It combines two of the greatest holiday flavors, eggnog and sugar cookies; it’s Christmas in a glass!
Besides drinking eggnog straight from a nice cold glass, I like to put it in my milk frother and add it to my cappuccinos. It adds a little sweetness and the thick, fatty eggnog makes the milk froth really well. Don’t freak out over fat content, I don’t fill the whole frother with eggnog, I just use about half eggnog and half skim milk and it froths beautifully! If you want to be conservative, you could probably do 3/4 skim milk and 1/4 eggnog. It’s the holidays and eggnog is only available once a year, so you might as well just indulge a little. If you don’t have a cappuccino maker or milk frother, eggnog is good in coffee too! For the over 21 crowd, eggnog tastes great with rum or whatever other liqueurs you might have hanging around. My cousins, Brenda and Alison, even make cookies and pancakes out of eggnog and I’m sure there are tons of other recipes and ideas for eggnog on the internet.
If you’ve never tried eggnog, I suggest you try just a small glass. If you like ice cream and milkshakes, you’d probably like eggnog. It’s thick, sweet, and rich. If you already know you like eggnog, you should definitely look for the Hood brand eggnog in sugar cookie flavor at your local supermarket this holiday season.
(Note:I looked at the Hood webpage to see if you could do a location search. Unfortunately, Hood doesn’t have such a feature. They suggest if you are looking for their products just request it at your local grocery store).