Some people serve their eggnog with Kirk repousse silver ladles from shimmering, cut-crystal punch bowls. Not my grandmother. Never one to stand on ceremony, she employed an old enameled tin baby bathtub and her soup ladle. Nobody ever protested, except when the eggnog ran out.
In that old-fashioned Guilford Avenue home, there were an even dozen of us, spanning three generations, infant through seventh decade. Like so many other families, the Christmas season was special, beginning in November, with the first noxious whiff of browning fruitcake flour to the last Lionel caboose packed back in its orange box in late January. The eggnogging hit somewhere in between.
To begin with, Lily Rose, my grandmother and the unchallenged cook, basically disapproved of alcohol consumption. She blamed on her Methodist and Baptist forbears and never had any taste for "whiskey." She noted that her father never drank -- except that each Sunday he took a chug of medicinal vanilla, a vanilla bean swimming in alcohol, a tincture then sold in drug stores. So there were little exceptions to the teetotaling rule.
Her eggnog was a family favorite because she was one of those exceptional cooks who possessed that lip-smacking touch. I have no idea what her formula was, except she loved rich and sweet cream. Because of the size of our household, she needed to make a considerable quantity -- about a lake -- of eggnog.
It was only logical that she would pull out a baby bathtub. After all, we had plenty of babies and this particular vessel was long past its prime. It hadn't seen a baby in years, but we didn't throw much away.
She used the same basin for her legendary oyster or lamb or veal pies, the ones with the unspeakably delicious crusts.
I can still hear a red-handled egg beater splattering away as she tortured those egg yolks and whites. Strictly for "taste," she then poured in about a quarter-cup whiskey and issued strict orders (always observed) that no child could touch a drop of eggnog.
We junior members were allowed to take the time-blackened nutmeg grater from the spice shelf. This kitchen implement looked even older than my grandmother. It probably was. The grater smelled just like Christmas, the toasty warm kitchen and the holiday culinary inventory that rested in bins and basins.
I cannot imagine what vintage those nutmeg seeds were. Each year those hard nuggets grew smaller. And tucked away in the compartment at the top of the grater, they made a rattling sound. Once I remember asking my grandmother why she didn't buy pre-grated nutmeg in a McCormick's can.
She rolled up her nose and pronounced: "It just wouldn't taste good and beside, you wouldn't know how old it is. Those stores keep everything on the shelves too long." I didn't utter any objection, knowing full well that it was now 1956 and that our nutmeg likely dated from the Herbert Hoover era.
Once the egg whites had been beaten to the point of extinction, and heavily peppered with grated nutmeg, the filled tub went into the cold pantry, on the floor, where we'd better not step in it.
During the course of the holiday season, many friends and relatives came and called. Lily presided over the food presentation. For the most formal of occasions, we "drew chairs up" around the dining room tables and served complete meals of nothing but sweets. The menu was all homemade: chocolate cake, the real Baltimore version with yellow dough; coconut cake, made from fresh coconuts bought at the Lexington or Belair markets, then axed in the vise on the basement workbench; orange cake, the layers filled with quince jelly; a huge pound cake, arguably the best cake of all, filled with butter and more eggs; and a fruit cake, made a month before from a 1903 recipe and served in the smallest of slivers.
And, if she were in a good mood, Lily also pulled out a pan of her personal supply of homemade Christmas caramels, which she'd been hiding under the drop cloth of an old sewing machine in the pantry.
These were the same caramels she often made as a young girl growing up on North Broadway in East Baltimore. She and her friends used to hide these irresistible sweets behind the marble steps and little hidden outcroppings on the fronts of houses, so that, after fasting for 12 hours or more for Christmas Holy Communion, they could bolt out of St. Paul's Church on Caroline Street and pop down an emergency caramel to prevent starvation.
Toward the end of the Christmas season, my grandmother observed how far her eggnog seemed to be going. The chocolate caramels were memories; the orange cake was in crumbs; there was only one stonewear crock of sugar cookies left. But, through some miracle known only to the angels, the eggnog held out in ample supply.
Her husband, my grandfather E.J. Monaghan, just smiled. So did just about every other adult member of the family. You see, on nights when Lily Rose wasn't watching, they took it upon themselves to repair to the pantry and pour a healthy Niagara of whiskey into the nutmegged eggs and cream.
As for Lily Rose, she either knew or didn't object. Each December-January night, she had a small glass before retiring and snored all the better.