Traditions & Another Recipe

I’ve spent a fair amount of time over this past holiday season thinking about family traditions. My new daughter-in-law had asked me to tell her about my family’s traditions. She wanted to include them when we all got together.

My first reaction was, “What holiday traditions?” I honestly couldn’t think of one special family thing we did every year while I was growing up. We had Christmas trees. I imagine most were bought. Once, when my mom was older and living on the river, she and I went out searching the wild space between a field and a creek to find a likely specimen to cut down. Can’t get any fresher than that. But by that late date most of her fancy glass ornaments, the ones I remembered as a kid where gone, broken. Too many moves. Too much rough handling by a clumsy kid, who I’d rather not name. And some cats. Cats do love climbing trees and fragile glass objects don’t have much of a chance. Then there was the 1993 flood. Mom saved her photos and genealogy notebooks, but not much else. I guess I do have the last ornament, a glass ball with three faded stripes.

Then something clicked, and I went to my recipe box, a relic from my high school Home Economy class, and found a favorite card. Judging by the ink I used and the sad condition of the note card, it had to be one of the earliest recipes I collected—closing in on fifty years old. It came from my sister. At that time, she would have been a young farm wife who was out in the barn milking a cow every day. Scalding the whole milk would have been an important step. Her eggnog was wonderful and when I started my own family I began making a big batch every year. That tradition waned as the kids left home and, at some point, stopped all together. Store-bought eggnog filled in the gap until counting calories became more important.  

So, I had a recipe card that I hadn’t looked at for years and I tried making a big batch like I remembered doing—it was a total flop. Weak and wimpy, the only saving grace was using it steamed in a cappuccino.

I sat down to read the recipe card, really study it, because it didn’t make any sense. I remembered that I’d condensed the directions, so they would fit on the card. I didn’t remember all the mistakes, spelling and otherwise, I’d made. But there they were. I honestly don’t know how I managed working from this card all those years ago. I must have been good at improvising.

I passed on attempting any more Christmas eggnog, but I didn’t want to give up. There was New Year’s Eve to consider. I searched the internet, such a great thing to have, and found a recipe that had the essential spirit of my sister’s original recipe. I made a small batch and it was perfect.

My thanks to Alton Brown for a great recipe. It provided the last minute save for this one family tradition.

Find Alton Brown’s recipe here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/eggnog-recipe2-2013745