12DC: Day 4 – Eggnog
A family tradition has grown over the past few years. Every Thanksgiving, we have an Eggnog tasting. Nothing fancy or scientific (though perhaps that can be arranged next year!) and we’re pretty bad about organizing this. Point of fact, this year, we only had 4 varieties to try out. Last year, however, was a different story. Again, due to poor planning, several people brought several different varieties, which lead us to have 14 different brands of eggnog.
For reference, these are the eggnogs pictured:
- Turkey Hill
- Southern Comfort (Traditional)
- Southern Comfort (Vanilla Spice)
- Organic Valley
- Shop Rite
- Hood (Sugar Cookie)
- Hood (Pumpkin)
- Hood (Gingerbread)
- Hood (Cinnemon)
- Axelrod
- Wawa
- Tuscan Dairy Farms
- Soy Nog
- Borden
Like I said, nothing particularly scientific or comprehensive about the process (heck, we don’t even add alcohol), but a general consensus arose. First, “flavored” eggnogs (like Vanilla Spice or Pumpkin, etc…), while tasty and a nice change of pace, were generally considered to be out of the running for the prize. Second, Soy Nog was unanimously declared the worst egg nog evar. This may have had something to do with the fact that it didn’t actually have egg in it, and thus isn’t really eggnog, but still. And finally, the winner (not unanimous, but it scored a decisive victory), was actually Wawa brand eggnog. For those of you non-East-Coasters, Wawa is a popular convenience store (a la 7-Eleven, but better) and dairy farm, and their Eggnog is great.
Up until this event started, I’d never been much of a fan of eggnog. There’s just something unappealing about a substance that is so scary-bad-for-you that you can only consume it for a limited period of the year. But I’ve grown into it and am looking forward to next year’s tasting…
