Navigating through 2023 might be problematic – no bull!
Are we post-pandemic? Still in the pandemic? In a tripledemic (covid, flu, RSV)?
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Why does Gemma Correll’s cat-lover have legs each bigger than her torso? (Also, why the cowboy boots?)
@ Carl Fink – I think she meant it as impressionistic perspective, emphasizing both the size of the cat and the size of the lap.
We still have a carton of eggnog, so THAT season isn’t quite over yet. And I have an eggnog cake I’m going to try this week.
Well, Christmas and New Years are so last year.
At any rate, Christmas and New Years Eve are so last year.
Funny thing: I bought (and consumed) some eggnog in late November, and never saw it in the store again. Either they stopped carrying it, or it was in very serious demand.
Standard American (non-alcoholic) eggnog is not available anywhere here. German “Eierlikör” (egg liquer) just isn’t the same, and the alcoholic content (typically from 30 to 50 proof) is only part of the problem.
Americans may be familiar with Eierlikör as Advocaat (the Dutch name) or the Polish version (the name of which I don’t know). It’s not great for drinking, but it’s a fantastic ice cream topping or poured over cake that’s a little dry.
This sounds the same as the Dutch Advocaat, made with egg yolks and brandy. Altho in today’s world, who eats uncooked/unbaked egg yolks? Which is the reason I wouldn’t make my own eggnog. I assume the purchased Advocaat is pasteurized.
Non-alcoholic versions of beverages have always been a thing here in America. We drink what we call “apple cider” which is just a less-filtered version of apple juice and not what a British person would call cider. Then there was this guy Welch who made grape juice a thing so that we could drink something that came in a bottle like wine but had no alcohol. You can get alcoholic eggnog in a bottle in liquor stores, but if you buy the stuff in the supermarket you’ll have to add the rum yourself.
You can temper the eggs with hot milk or cream if you’re really concerned. At least in the US, you can also buy pasteurized eggs. That being said, the risk of salmonella from eggs is not very high and when in eggnog with sugar and alcohol, most of any bacteria that were present won’t last.
MiB, I’ve had both and frankly, I enjoy the taste of the grocery-store eggnog better than the spiked version. I wonder what would happen if one mixed Bailey’s into it? Maybe I’ll try that next fall.
Egg nog straight is too thick and sweet for me. A shot rum greatly improves it. As a kid, my mother would add some milk to ours.
Southern Comfort has a non-alcoholic version of eggnog, plain and vanilla spice. So far, it’s been the best we’ve tasted. We add SC rather than rum, but I’m a sucker for anything sweet.
And then there’s the British verdict on American beer, which is like making love in a canoe, because it’s ……
A British verdict on American cider
Don’t fall for it. That guy is an American.
yes, as of last week . . .
@MiB: Plenty of Americans share that opinion of mass market American beer. That’s why craft beers have over 25% of the market share. Conversely, lots of Brits like those sex in a canoe American beers. When my father did his 2 weeks of naval reserve active duty in Wales back in the 80s, his local colleagues kept trying to get him to drink their favorite American beer: Budweiser.
It was bad enough back when we only had wine snobs. Now we also have beer snobs. In parts of the Pacific Northwest (and elsewhere, I’m pretty much certain) the weed snobs are being created.
And as for sex in a canoe, it’s plenty fun if you’re open to the possibility of it turning into an impromptu swim meet at any point in the proceedings.
Count me among the beer snobs. I once had a tee-shirt saying “Life’s too short to drink cheap beer.”
I like many types of beer. I don’t find anything wrong with a light lager like Bud on occasion.
Don’t conflate bad with cheap: in Germany you can go to the local Aldi or Lidl and get a 500 ml can of German beer for like 45¢, and while this may not be the best beer you can get in Germany, it will be quite acceptable, Reinheitsgebot compliant, and if you sold it in the US, you could easily charge an order of magnitude more more it.
@ larK – That might be a worthwhile experiment. The beer I normally buy is a good bit more expensive, but that’s partly because I’ve picked up the widespread German dislike for canned beer, and normally buy only bottles. An “order of magnitude” sounds a bit much: I’m not sure whether you could get $4.50 for a single can of beer in an American store. On the other hand, that is very close to the price of a half-liter of beer as sold in most German restaurants. Depending on location and/or brand, the going rate is normally 4 to 6 Euros.
Kilby, depending on where you are in the U.S., it’s definitely possible to find people who’d pay $4.50 a can for beer, if the beer in the can met their level of beer snobbery. Portland, OR in particular, is infested with “brewpubs” whose raison d’etre is that they are locations where one can buy beer that isn’t available in other locations. I am NOT a beer snob (watery rotted grain? No thanks.) so I can’t give strong examples, plus for several years now I’ve lived in a completely different time zone.
So I just went to Acmemarkets.com (American Acme supermarket chain) and they sell Hofbräu in a six-pack of 11.2 oz bottles for $13.99, which I calculate would be $3.52 for 500 ml. (13.99 ÷ 6 ÷ 11.2 x 16.907)
So yeah, I can see if you play up the “imported from Germany” , Reinheitsgebot, 1487, throw in the word “premium”, you could easily charge $4.50 for a single can.
And incidentally, inflation happened since the last time I was in Germany, where I think I marked the cheapest of those beers at 23¢ (circa 2016).
If you open it up to restaurant pricing, you could probably easily get twice that. According to this place a Bennigan’s in Santa Clara, CA charges $6 for 16 oz drafts, and $6 for 12 oz (some 11.2, I’m sure) bottles, domestic and import, popularly priced for a popular chain, so a more snobby place could easily get away with $9…
Restaurant pricing for a can of beer? Unavailable at any price in most restaurants. Most restaurants aren’t licensed to serve beer at all, and the ones that are are more likely to offer a glass or a bottle.
Speaking of beer . . .
Well, “near” beer.. If there ever was a brand for which a “light” version was unnecessary, that one was it.
“Whoever named it ‘near beer’ was a poor judge of distance.” –Philander Johnson
I’ve seen criticism of “near miss” (for e.g. averted air collisions) on the ground that it was an actual miss, not nearly a miss.
“… beer? Unavailable at any price in most restaurants.”? Where do you live? Just about everywhere around here that I can think of has some beer. Most have at least one quality brand available.
Ed, are you missing the detail in JP’s remark that it’s beer in cans he says is rare in restaurants?
Mitch, I’m sure he’s getting cans of beer from every drive-through restaurant in Boise. Idaho does things differently (and they’re proud of it.)
Ah, yes, Mitch4, I did skip over that “in cans,” although I have seen cans now and then. And James, I no longer live in Boise and you’re right that they do things differently there.
My parents went to WSU and had to cross over into Idaho to drink, back in the day. So I’m sure that beer from every restaurant is closer to reality in Moscow (the one in Idaho). But no, everywhere else*, most restaurants do not have beer on the menu. In most of the states, a business needs a permit to sell beer, which adds costs and regulations that most restaurants choose to avoid. A McDonalds franchise just isn’t going to make enough profit on beer to be worth the hassle of chasing a permit.
*in rhe United States
reaching back to the 7th, Mitch… near miss and nearly miss are not interchangeable. Having a near miss (a miss wherein the two aircraft are in close proximity, i.e., are near each other) does not imply nearly missing (i.e., a collision which was almost avoided.)
This has been “a wasted legal education”, tip your servers and have a great day.
Thanks for that fine point!
I won’t get the exact phrasing right, but one of the sponsors of our classical music radio station is a law firm. Their promo messages list some of their awards and specialties, which include air collision liability. They mention holding some kind of record for wrongful death judgments.
Around here most real sit-down restaurants do have liquor licenses (to the extent that reviewers/critics make a note of it when they don’t) and then whether they have beer is a matter of their brand and brand concept. For ethnic restaurants that often means they import beer from the old country, which I think often isn’t otherwise so readily available.
However, apart from some restaurants that have draft beer on tap, as noted before it’s pretty much always bottles and not cans. Cans are declassé.
Once upon a time, there was an EXCELLENT Italian restaurant in my town. For whatever reason, they couldn’t get a beer/wine or liquor license (maybe all were taken and no one wanted to give up his/hers; who knows). Anyway, the owners provided teacups if you brought in your own wine. Shades of Prohibition!
Dave, what’s the difference between a “real sit-down” restaurant and all those other sit-down restaurants? Besides the availability of liquor, I mean?
On a few occasions I have run into BYOB restaurants, but I think that was probably in the US, not in Germany. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly comfortable, logical arrangement.
Often you can sit down at a fast-food restaurant; but they might be distinguished from “real sit-down” restaurants.
Here in my neighborhood we have a restaurant called “The Sit Down Cafe & Sushi Bar“. They have sidewalk seating (in season) but I guess that doesn’t invalidate their status as a real sit-down place.
James: a “real sit-down restaurant” has (a) table service (that’s what people normally mean by sit-down, regardless of the existence of tables at most McFood franchises) and (b) either isn’t a chain or has no more than a handful of alternate locations (that’s what I meant by “real”, it’s supposed to exclude the likes of Applebee’s.)
Applebee’s has both table service and a liquor license. Why are we trying to exclude them, or call them unreal? Markup on alcohol is substantial, which is why restaurants offer it. But the costs of obtaining and maintaining a license are also substantial, which is why the fast-food ones don’t offer it. In theory, the wait staff are monitoring just who is consuming the alcohol served on the premises, and can incur liability for the establishment if alcohol is consumed on the premises. They’re supposed to cut you off if you’re visibly impaired.
Note that there is a substantial difference between “visually impaired” and “visibly impaired”
Comics I Don't Understand 
Why does Gemma Correll’s cat-lover have legs each bigger than her torso? (Also, why the cowboy boots?)
@ Carl Fink – I think she meant it as impressionistic perspective, emphasizing both the size of the cat and the size of the lap.
We still have a carton of eggnog, so THAT season isn’t quite over yet. And I have an eggnog cake I’m going to try this week.
Well, Christmas and New Years are so last year.
At any rate, Christmas and New Years Eve are so last year.
Funny thing: I bought (and consumed) some eggnog in late November, and never saw it in the store again. Either they stopped carrying it, or it was in very serious demand.
Standard American (non-alcoholic) eggnog is not available anywhere here. German “Eierlikör” (egg liquer) just isn’t the same, and the alcoholic content (typically from 30 to 50 proof) is only part of the problem.
Americans may be familiar with Eierlikör as Advocaat (the Dutch name) or the Polish version (the name of which I don’t know). It’s not great for drinking, but it’s a fantastic ice cream topping or poured over cake that’s a little dry.
This sounds the same as the Dutch Advocaat, made with egg yolks and brandy. Altho in today’s world, who eats uncooked/unbaked egg yolks? Which is the reason I wouldn’t make my own eggnog. I assume the purchased Advocaat is pasteurized.
Non-alcoholic versions of beverages have always been a thing here in America. We drink what we call “apple cider” which is just a less-filtered version of apple juice and not what a British person would call cider. Then there was this guy Welch who made grape juice a thing so that we could drink something that came in a bottle like wine but had no alcohol. You can get alcoholic eggnog in a bottle in liquor stores, but if you buy the stuff in the supermarket you’ll have to add the rum yourself.
You can temper the eggs with hot milk or cream if you’re really concerned. At least in the US, you can also buy pasteurized eggs. That being said, the risk of salmonella from eggs is not very high and when in eggnog with sugar and alcohol, most of any bacteria that were present won’t last.
MiB, I’ve had both and frankly, I enjoy the taste of the grocery-store eggnog better than the spiked version. I wonder what would happen if one mixed Bailey’s into it? Maybe I’ll try that next fall.
Egg nog straight is too thick and sweet for me. A shot rum greatly improves it. As a kid, my mother would add some milk to ours.
Southern Comfort has a non-alcoholic version of eggnog, plain and vanilla spice. So far, it’s been the best we’ve tasted. We add SC rather than rum, but I’m a sucker for anything sweet.
I also use eggnog in baking –
http://www.alldogssite.com/nailed_it23_120522_1.html
My next project is to make Tres Leches cake and substitute eggnog for one of the leches; we still have one carton of eggnog left.
http://www.alldogssite.com/nailed_it19_111722_1.html
A British verdict on American cider –
And then there’s the British verdict on American beer, which is like making love in a canoe, because it’s ……
A British verdict on American cider
Don’t fall for it. That guy is an American.
yes, as of last week . . .
@MiB: Plenty of Americans share that opinion of mass market American beer. That’s why craft beers have over 25% of the market share. Conversely, lots of Brits like those sex in a canoe American beers. When my father did his 2 weeks of naval reserve active duty in Wales back in the 80s, his local colleagues kept trying to get him to drink their favorite American beer: Budweiser.
It was bad enough back when we only had wine snobs. Now we also have beer snobs. In parts of the Pacific Northwest (and elsewhere, I’m pretty much certain) the weed snobs are being created.
And as for sex in a canoe, it’s plenty fun if you’re open to the possibility of it turning into an impromptu swim meet at any point in the proceedings.
Count me among the beer snobs. I once had a tee-shirt saying “Life’s too short to drink cheap beer.”
I like many types of beer. I don’t find anything wrong with a light lager like Bud on occasion.
Don’t conflate bad with cheap: in Germany you can go to the local Aldi or Lidl and get a 500 ml can of German beer for like 45¢, and while this may not be the best beer you can get in Germany, it will be quite acceptable, Reinheitsgebot compliant, and if you sold it in the US, you could easily charge an order of magnitude more more it.
@ larK – That might be a worthwhile experiment. The beer I normally buy is a good bit more expensive, but that’s partly because I’ve picked up the widespread German dislike for canned beer, and normally buy only bottles. An “order of magnitude” sounds a bit much: I’m not sure whether you could get $4.50 for a single can of beer in an American store. On the other hand, that is very close to the price of a half-liter of beer as sold in most German restaurants. Depending on location and/or brand, the going rate is normally 4 to 6 Euros.
Kilby, depending on where you are in the U.S., it’s definitely possible to find people who’d pay $4.50 a can for beer, if the beer in the can met their level of beer snobbery. Portland, OR in particular, is infested with “brewpubs” whose raison d’etre is that they are locations where one can buy beer that isn’t available in other locations. I am NOT a beer snob (watery rotted grain? No thanks.) so I can’t give strong examples, plus for several years now I’ve lived in a completely different time zone.
So I just went to Acmemarkets.com (American Acme supermarket chain) and they sell Hofbräu in a six-pack of 11.2 oz bottles for $13.99, which I calculate would be $3.52 for 500 ml. (13.99 ÷ 6 ÷ 11.2 x 16.907)
So yeah, I can see if you play up the “imported from Germany” , Reinheitsgebot, 1487, throw in the word “premium”, you could easily charge $4.50 for a single can.
And incidentally, inflation happened since the last time I was in Germany, where I think I marked the cheapest of those beers at 23¢ (circa 2016).
If you open it up to restaurant pricing, you could probably easily get twice that. According to this place a Bennigan’s in Santa Clara, CA charges $6 for 16 oz drafts, and $6 for 12 oz (some 11.2, I’m sure) bottles, domestic and import, popularly priced for a popular chain, so a more snobby place could easily get away with $9…
Restaurant pricing for a can of beer? Unavailable at any price in most restaurants. Most restaurants aren’t licensed to serve beer at all, and the ones that are are more likely to offer a glass or a bottle.
Speaking of beer . . .
Well, “near” beer.. If there ever was a brand for which a “light” version was unnecessary, that one was it.
“Whoever named it ‘near beer’ was a poor judge of distance.” –Philander Johnson
I’ve seen criticism of “near miss” (for e.g. averted air collisions) on the ground that it was an actual miss, not nearly a miss.
“… beer? Unavailable at any price in most restaurants.”? Where do you live? Just about everywhere around here that I can think of has some beer. Most have at least one quality brand available.
Ed, are you missing the detail in JP’s remark that it’s beer in cans he says is rare in restaurants?
Mitch, I’m sure he’s getting cans of beer from every drive-through restaurant in Boise. Idaho does things differently (and they’re proud of it.)
Ah, yes, Mitch4, I did skip over that “in cans,” although I have seen cans now and then. And James, I no longer live in Boise and you’re right that they do things differently there.
My parents went to WSU and had to cross over into Idaho to drink, back in the day. So I’m sure that beer from every restaurant is closer to reality in Moscow (the one in Idaho). But no, everywhere else*, most restaurants do not have beer on the menu. In most of the states, a business needs a permit to sell beer, which adds costs and regulations that most restaurants choose to avoid. A McDonalds franchise just isn’t going to make enough profit on beer to be worth the hassle of chasing a permit.
*in rhe United States
reaching back to the 7th, Mitch… near miss and nearly miss are not interchangeable. Having a near miss (a miss wherein the two aircraft are in close proximity, i.e., are near each other) does not imply nearly missing (i.e., a collision which was almost avoided.)
This has been “a wasted legal education”, tip your servers and have a great day.
Thanks for that fine point!
I won’t get the exact phrasing right, but one of the sponsors of our classical music radio station is a law firm. Their promo messages list some of their awards and specialties, which include air collision liability. They mention holding some kind of record for wrongful death judgments.
Around here most real sit-down restaurants do have liquor licenses (to the extent that reviewers/critics make a note of it when they don’t) and then whether they have beer is a matter of their brand and brand concept. For ethnic restaurants that often means they import beer from the old country, which I think often isn’t otherwise so readily available.
However, apart from some restaurants that have draft beer on tap, as noted before it’s pretty much always bottles and not cans. Cans are declassé.
Once upon a time, there was an EXCELLENT Italian restaurant in my town. For whatever reason, they couldn’t get a beer/wine or liquor license (maybe all were taken and no one wanted to give up his/hers; who knows). Anyway, the owners provided teacups if you brought in your own wine. Shades of Prohibition!
Dave, what’s the difference between a “real sit-down” restaurant and all those other sit-down restaurants? Besides the availability of liquor, I mean?
On a few occasions I have run into BYOB restaurants, but I think that was probably in the US, not in Germany. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly comfortable, logical arrangement.
Often you can sit down at a fast-food restaurant; but they might be distinguished from “real sit-down” restaurants.
Here in my neighborhood we have a restaurant called “The Sit Down Cafe & Sushi Bar“. They have sidewalk seating (in season) but I guess that doesn’t invalidate their status as a real sit-down place.
James: a “real sit-down restaurant” has (a) table service (that’s what people normally mean by sit-down, regardless of the existence of tables at most McFood franchises) and (b) either isn’t a chain or has no more than a handful of alternate locations (that’s what I meant by “real”, it’s supposed to exclude the likes of Applebee’s.)
Applebee’s has both table service and a liquor license. Why are we trying to exclude them, or call them unreal? Markup on alcohol is substantial, which is why restaurants offer it. But the costs of obtaining and maintaining a license are also substantial, which is why the fast-food ones don’t offer it. In theory, the wait staff are monitoring just who is consuming the alcohol served on the premises, and can incur liability for the establishment if alcohol is consumed on the premises. They’re supposed to cut you off if you’re visibly impaired.
Note that there is a substantial difference between “visually impaired” and “visibly impaired”