Merry Christmas! and Free Range Friday

I'm listening to the St. Thomas radio station...'We eat and we drink and we limin', having Christmas in the old time way' is the song on now. Which sounds good to me!

Yesterday I did what I've not done in many, many years. No, not that. I made eggnog! Of course, I forgot to take photos, so I will just tell you the very simple way I did it.

MJ's (and a few million other people's) Eggnog

6 eggs
1 quart of milk
1 small container half and half (or use heavy cream, even better)
1 1/2 cups of rum (some use bourbon, I'm WAY too cheap to use bourbon that way!)
4 teaspoons vanilla extract (the real vanilla please!)
1/2 cup sugar (honey would be fine, I wouldn't use as much though, maybe half)
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg (sure, ground is fine!)
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice (which I happened to have, if not, use ground cloves or just the nutmeg, no harm no foul)

With either a mixer or blender (I used the blender, in batches - because I FORGOT I have a beautiful mixer now!) blend the eggs, sugar and spices until the eggs get light colored and the sugar is dissolved. Slowly add the milk and half and half. Blend well. Add the rum (more or less to your taste). Chill and Bob's your uncle, you've got eggnog!

There are fancier ways where you separate the eggs and whip the egg whites into fluff, folding it into the mixture, and if I had a big dinner going on, I'd probably do that, but this eggnog was going into a big bottle and hitting the road so it would have been a bit of wasted effort. There are also egg nogs that are cooked to avoid freaking out people who are scared of raw eggs. In those, you do the mixing as above, but then take that mixture and put it in a pan and bring to 'just' a boil and then back to the mixing, then chill. Again, I'm of the school if it didn't knock off my family after all this time, no raw egg is going to get me now. Hush....I like my chosen ignorance!

Buen provecho! and have yourself a very Merry Christmas!!!

Last night a few friends got together and did a stoop to pub crawl...and luckily got home not long before 5 inches of rain slammed down onto Culebra by surprise! I'm posting these now because I know there will be a lot more photos as the day and night go on...

Some of the Stoop Crew saying 'Merry Christmas!!'

We lost Jack at the ice cream stand...

Hector and Perri make merry

Gretchen and Juan get down!

We ended up at Susie's, but the photos sort of...went downhill by that point and I stick to my premise, if I can't post anything nice (about my friends and myself!) I won't post anything at all!

Now, if I could just get me some guavaberry!!