Holiday bonus - Homemade Eggnog!

A Christmas tradition in my family is homemade eggnog. Mom used to make it for us, but now my older brother is the master of eggnog. This is nothing like the stuff you buy in the store. My brother's eggnog is simple, and delicious.

Here is his recipe:

1 egg
1 cup whole milk
1 Tbsp of honey
¼ tsp of vanilla
1/8 tsp of salt
Nutmeg to taste

Blend for about a minute to emulsify the honey into the milk.

My brother keeps bees, so the honey he uses is phenomenal. When you buy honey from the store it's not the same, but still tastes better than plain old sugar. Sugar is still an option though, if you are out of honey.

For that matter, quality ingredients are always important.

If you want to turn it into an adult beverage, add some bourbon, or even better brandy.

The blender doesn't need to be anything fancy. You could probably use a Vitamix, but I just use my old blender from the thrift store. Works great!
















I hope you give this a try, and that your family loves it as much as we do!

Update 12/24/2014
I've been trying some variations on the ingredients. First I tried replacing all the milk with cream, and that didn't taste right. I've also tried eliminating the honey entirely, and adding a little extra cream to the milk for more taste. That wasn't too bad. It's still nice to have half a tablespoon of sugar or honey per serving, otherwise the flavors don't express themselves as well. I've also tried half milk and half cream, which also isn't too bad, but the milk really brings a lot of flavor to the mixture. So of these attempts, my favorite is the full amount of milk, plus an extra splash of cream, with half the honey or sugar. That makes it a little bit more healthy for someone trying to eat low-carb.

A friend of mine mentioned that she frequently makes something like this for breakfast, but uses maple syrup for the sweetner instead. That sounds pretty exciting actually. Too bad I'm out of maple syrup right now, but I definitely plan to try that in the future.

Also I initially forget to include nutmeg in the ingredients. A dash of nutmeg adds a lot to eggnog too. I highly recommend it!

Merry Christmas!
Jack

Hot muffins

This week I decided to go to Aldi because I like their bacon. I already had eggs and cheese, but I needed bacon and veggies. When I got to Aldi, they didn't have mixed veggies, so I bought some peas and some corn instead.

Slided chunks of bacon, or chunks of bacon slices?

Chunks of bacon slices. I also crushed a couple of cloves of fresh garlic and added them to the bacon.

I wasn't trying to cook the veggies here, but they were slightly frozen, So I threw them in with the hot bacon and turned off the heat. Then I let them sit while I mixed up the eggs.

I also added some dehydrated onions, lots of cayenne, a little salt, and a good amount of black pepper from my grinder. Since this mixture has cooled already, I decided to try mixing in the shredded cheese instead of adding it on top later.

It's always fun (annoying) to try to distribute the mixture evenly. It's one of the reasons I like using a cake pan most of the time. But the muffins are easier to eat so sometimes it's worth the effort. And it's a nice change when things are getting monotonous. 

Dividing the egg mixture evenly is also difficult, but I got these pretty close to even. This mixture was just eggs and heavy cream, because the seasoning was already in the bacon/veggie mixture.

Close enough for me! I had sprayed each cup with coconut oil before adding the mixture, and there is a lot of fat in the muffins anyway, so they popped right out once they had cooled.

After they were pretty well cooled, I put them into plastic containers and then into the fridge.

These muffins are nice and spicy, and the bacon is really delicious. It's worth spending extra money for good bacon! I still like the mixed veggies better than only corn and peas, but these muffins are still pretty darn good.

I eat two of them each morning. I just throw them on a plate and microwave for one minute. Spicy food goes great with coffee, so these are a quick and delicion breakfast. And they are packed with protein!

Cleaning out the fridge

For this week's egg bake, I decided to truly clean out my fridge. All I have left in there is some raspberry jam and other condiments. I need to go shopping!

The only things I had to buy were the eggs and a new carton of heavy cream. Everything else was already there. I had some old spinach and mushrooms leftover from last week, some baby carrots, a package of bacon that was getting old, and even the pan was leftover from making sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving. I kept it in the fridge so the yummy butter wouldn't be wasted. Even the cheddar cheese had been in there for a few weeks and needed to get used up.

This pan is "dirty" with delicious butter and caramelized sweet potato. Some of the naturally occurring sugar ends up leaching into the butter when you cook them properly. Lots of good flavor that I didn't want to dump down the drain. So I kept it in the fridge for a few days instead.

I actually put it on the stove top for a few minutes to melt the butter. That made it easier to spread around.

These carrots were getting boring since I ran out of hummus. So I dumped them in and rolled them around in the butter.

This spinach is looking sad, but it will still cook up nicely. I packed it on top of the carrots.

Once the bacon cooked down a little bit, I added a teaspoon or so of crushed garlic, from a jar. I probably could have added more. This jar is not very potent.

The sliced mushrooms went in after a few minutes. I put the lid on so they would soften from the steam. Then I mixed them into the bacon so they could absorb some of the fat. Later on there was still some residual fat in the frying pan, so I made some scrambled eggs for dinner. I really do love eggs. I also had a cold that day and had lost my appetite. I probably needed the protein!

It seemed like I had a lot of bacon and mushrooms, so I left some of them in the frying pan for scambled eggs too. But I still put enough in the cake pan to compress the spinach a little more.

This is about a cup and a half of cheddar. Maybe a little more. I used some of it for my scrambled eggs too. I poured the eggs over this. I used almost 2 dozen eggs this time, which also had heavy cream, salt, pepper, and cayenned mixed in with them.

I cooked it at 350 for about half an hour. By then the cheese looked perfect. The carrot were still pretty firm, but not hard. I probably could have cooked it another 10 minutes though. Then the carrots would have been a bit softer.

The carrots are fun because they are something different. Last week I had used squash and that was also delicious. It actually got better the longer it sat, as more flavor soaked into the squash. I tend to make the same things over and over again, so it is fun to change one or two of the ingredients and see how it turns out. So far so good!