Food Conversations

Eggnog

(and other seasonal foods)

Welcome to the sides you gluttons. This time, I have beef with whole seasons, or at least the way that foods are marketed for them.

I wanted to just talk about eggnog, the creamy, delicious snot that you either love or hate. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my whole problem with the drink is how it is arbitrarily made scarce by only being available during certain times of the year. There is no reason for this other than to create artificial demand. That really burns my toast if you know what I mean. 

You know it's Christmas when the 'nog comes out.

Personally, I really like eggnog depending on where it comes from. I’ve had homemade eggnog before that was… not much better than rotten milk. But I’ve also had eggnog that was simply heavenly, smooth and sweet with a hint of spice. It makes one wonder how much of our personal tastes are merely the cause of a poorly prepared dish or drink. 

But regardless of this, seasonal foods as a whole kind of suck in that you only get to have them a few months in the year. Why is the world like this? 
Really, there are some good reasons too. Apparently certain ingredients are only available during seasonal harvests, or their cost is dramatically lower at these times. This economically explains why these dishes are at least more popular during these times of the year…
But it’s still a bunch of bull. Sometimes I want to enjoy eggnog in the summer and I don’t care how weird that might be. What is considered weird is just a standard made by social norms and traditions anyway. 

Speaking of social norms, what is the deal with Christmas moving in to Halloween’s territory? It seems like every year the eggnog comes out earlier and earlier and next thing you know you probably WILL start seeing it in the summer. I always say that Christmas moving backwards makes no sense since it’s just ruining other holidays. It’s made so much worse when there’s a perfectly good month for Christmas to move FORWARD to, and that’s January. Nothing happens in January except New Years day. You could have all of December to fret about xmas and then all of January to just enjoy the holiday vibe. But no, we have our winter holidays moving further into the fall. At least we get eggnog at more times of the year.

Keep chugging readers. The world is weird and that’s alright.

From the desk of Master Michael Shryne
For Food Conversations

11/8/25

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