One of the Christmas traditions on my checklist is to enjoy some good ol'-fashioned nonalcoholic eggnog out of the dairy case. I'm not married to the stuff, but I still like a glass of a fine December morning.
This pint bottle, from ice cream company Turkey Hill, fit the bill, rich and spiced up right.
People will generally sniff at such things, as they do fruitcake, saying it's plebeian, typical American baby food, and it's not real eggnog, which you have to make from scratch, beating the hell out of the eggs and adding copious amounts of rum.
Well, nuts to that. Very rarely have I encountered real eggnog, most memorably at an official college administration party, where it was offered in two punch bowls: With or Without. (Booze.) I tried some of both, wondering what the real deal would be like, and found it thin, only moderately spiced, and not exciting. I confess that they had whipped it up in the cafeteria, so it may not have been really top-drawer stuff.
But I like my dairy-case eggnog, and the other morning I cracked open the pint shown and had a gulp. Then some more. And some more. I knew it was an indulgence, because I saw on the label that it was 190 calories. I drank it anyway. Then I thought, Uh-oh, maybe that was two servings of 190 calories each? I just had 380 calories!
No. The pint bottle was supposed to be four servings. I had just drunk 760 calories.
This is the label from the half-gallon-size Turkey Hill bottle, found online; you see that a serving size is just 1/2 cup, and nutritional info is based on that, not counting anything you spiked it with. That one big drink I had contained more than 30% of my recommended caloric intake for the day, 88% of my recommended cholesterol, 100% of my saturated fat, and 120% of my sugars. And I even hadn't had breakfast yet. And I was going to a big Christmas lunch that day.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine who also loves the spurned treats of eggnog and fruitcake, and he said, "Yeah, it's basically like drinking heavy cream." (To be fair, a pint of heavy cream has more than 1,600 calories -- but his point is taken.)
I skipped breakfast; I didn't need it. I felt like I'd eaten a stack of pancakes. Maybe those Chocolate Chocolate Chip Pancakes from iHop. People whose doctors recommend they use Ensure should look into eggnog. If you're having a problem keeping your weight up, I have the solution.
The incomparable Mark Steyn, who as a singer is one hell of a writer, recorded a song of his own composition (with Kevin Amos) called "Runnin' on Eggnog," which I mentioned on this page a couple of Christmases ago. The song is a holiday tradition here, but I have to wonder how anyone does any runnin' on eggnog, even the nonalcoholic stuff.
Nappin' on eggnog, now that I can comprehend. Blarg.
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