I can't recall exactly how old we were, perhaps 10 and 11 or so? But it was Christmas time when my older sister Jenny, and I decided to take matters into our own hands.
We really, really wanted eggnog. When you grow up in a house where sweet things were rare, you learned to improvise... a lot.
I would spend an hour tackling the lid on the five gallon bucket of raw honey, as it was quite often the only sweet thing in the house, just to be able to slip my spoon in under the corner.
But that was before I learned where my dad hid his candy stash... errr, not that I ever swiped anything dad... honest! Mostly... *cough* anyway.
I digress.
As there was no eggnog to be found in the house, we decided to make some. Because after all, we decided we were cooking geniuses.
We dug up a recipe for eggnog and immediately headed for the kitchen.
"6 egg whites" were the very first items on the ingredient list.
Jenny and I looked at each other. Having always been warned of the evils of raw eggs and knowing full well that one never just ate them let alone drank them, we set about hard boiling six eggs.
Plus we didn't have the slightest clue how to seperate them otherwise.
While that was cooking, we mixed all the other ingredients together and had some nice, sweet, cinnamony flavored milk. All we needed was the eggs.
After all, it is called "egg"nog, right?
Once the eggs had finished cooking, we peeled off the shells. That's when we suddenly realized that there was something odd about this recipe.
"Umm, how do you think they mash up the eggs so well that there aren't any chunks?"
"I don't know! But let's try."
Getting out the potato masher and taking turns, we mashed, and mashed, and mashed, and mashed, and mashed some more, trying to make them all "creamy". But all we got was a bowl full of dry, crumbly eggs.
Finally frustrated, we decided that we should just add the eggs to the wet ingredients and blend them. Perhaps then they would creamify! (cause creamify is a cool word)
But alas, to our great disappointment, all we got was chunky milk.
Finally deciding that whoever wrote the recipe was a total idiot, or had some fancy mashing machine, we strained out the eggs and drank the milk.
Yes, you read that right. It was actually quite good!
To this day, I've never had the courage to attempt to make homemade eggnog again.
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