Musings: Eggnog makes me feel young again

Eggnog is a drink that transports me to Mechanic Street in Huntington and the house we lived in until I was 6. We would make it in an aluminum bowl with a manual hand mixer, which we called the “beater.” The mixer’s black handle turned the silver-colored crank that controlled the two oblong beaters that rotated into each other but miraculously never jammed together (well, almost never).

Mom would help me break the egg and measure one cup of whole milk into the bowl. She showed me how to pour out a teaspoon of vanilla and told me never to pour it from the bottle into the measuring spoon if the spoon was over the egg-milk mixture to avoid excess vanilla spilling in. As a haphazard cook, I never follow that rule now, but Mom was very precise.

Then, we’d spoon in a couple of teaspoons of sugar and start beating until the egg was fully mixed with the milk and lots of froth was on top. We’d pour the bowl of sweet egg milk into a glass, sprinkle on a tiny bit of nutmeg, and — voila! — we had eggnog. We didn’t worry about the raw egg — salmonella or not. And somehow, we didn’t get sick.

Now, I usually drink about one glass of eggnog a year, around this time of the season, and it comes from a carton that’s fully pasteurized. It’s creamier than when I was little and it has more spices in it, but it’s a little tradition that makes me know it’s the holidays and reminds me of a simple time of fun with my mom.

— Liz Roddin, Stony Brook