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Here is the ingredients list from a carton of Crystal Eggnog:

Milk, nonfat milk, nonfat milk solids, cream, high fructose corn syrup, egg yolks, sugar, corn syrup, nutmeg, natural and artificial flavour, disodium phosphate, annatto extract (colour), mono and diglycerides, turmeric (colour), whey, stabiliser (guar gum, carrageenan).

Imagine a drink with a consistency and flavour halfway between cream and custard. Add a hint of nutmeg and you’re just about there. If you drink it in America it’ll be chock full of horrible high fructose corn syrup rather than glucose, which is slightly more expensive and much better for you.

All hail the spirit of free enterprise!

I used to think that Absinthe was a pretty deadly drink – Baudelaire (and other artistically inclined Frenchies) destroyed themselves with it for years until the French authorities banned it. But I can’t help thinking that Baudelaire’s decline would have been much faster had he become hooked on everclear. Banned in the UK and several US states, it’s a very highly potent grain alcohol, similar to vodka but much, much stronger. The average bottle of Everclear is 95% proof.

Last night we had drinks with a couple Courtney recently became friends with. As we all know, drinks with me is rarely just a quick little snifter and home early to bed. We hit it pretty heavy. After a good number of empty beer bottles had been racked up our host nipped to the kitchen and rummaged in the freezer. “Have you ever had this?” he asked, holding up a bottle of Absolut. “Yes, of course” I replied. “No, this,” he said, holding up what was in his other hand, a bottle of Everclear.

I was sensible, or so I thought, and took only a couple of sips. It burnt like the first time I drank whisky. It felt like it was taking the enamel off my teeth and bleaching my guts, but other than that I manifested no ill effects. Not immediately, anyway.

I woke up at one this afternoon with a distinctly non-beer hangover. At about four I ate some granola and threw it back up. I slept awhile and then I had an omelette. It just about stayed down. It’s now twelve in the morning and I still feel like a pig shat in my head. Normally my hangovers recede midway through the afternoon and leave in their place an intense craving for fry-ups and pizzas. Not so this one; it has cruelly robbed me of my appetite.

Having undergone this important research, I feel it is my duty to warn you, dear readers, of the dangers of this noxious drink. Even if someone has a gun to your head, decline. A bullet would be less painful.

Of course, after I’d drunk my two sips my host told me what he uses it for when he’s not springing it on unsuspecting guests.

“Yeah, it’s really good for cleaning things.”

Actually, I think we do have Everclear in the UK, but not by that name. We call it methylated spirit. Excuse me, I have an overwhelming urge to retch.

Working in a coffee shop isn’t too bad. I get to eat and drink almost anything there for free. In the run up to Christmas we’ve been serving eggnog lattes. These are alright, but nowhere near as good as what I invented today.

The Festive Vanilla Nogshake

You will need:
3 big scoops or 0.6lbs or 270g of ice cream
1 cup or 240 ml of eggnog
50ml or a double shot of brandy

Throw ingredients into blender and pulse for 20-30 seconds; slightly longer than a normal milkshake because eggnog is so darned thick. Pour into a pint glass and top with whipped cream and a sprinkling of nutmeg, if you so desire. Suck through a straw until you can suck no more.

Make sure you have a friend on hand to help you finish it off. It’s very, very rich.

Variations: Chocolate ice cream gives and even richer flavour. Mint Choc Chip ice cream is wrong.

Dave has a weblog. It’s here. I’d have noted this phenomenon earlier, had I been paying attention to anything at all in the last couple of weeks/months.

Dave is remarkably likeable. Even I like him.

So what have I learnt from this 4000+ mile excursion across the USA? A multitude of things, to be sure, but one in particular keeps begging for attention, and now we’re settled I’ve had time to reflect on it properly.

Regional stereotypes in Europe and the UK are disproved by the people you meet often as they are reaffirmed. There’s the man from Edinburgh who can’t stand whisky and the Man Utd. fan who doesn’t live in Surrey. In America I’ve found this not to be the case; people conform to the stereotypes more often than not. While England is a small cameo piece, delicately and minutely detailed, America is painted in bold colours and broad strokes on a wide canvas.

I think much of this has to do with the way America communicates with itself. TV and film, especially, have formed as well as informed the public consciousness, and more than anywhere else. Hollywood has its ready stereotypes of each state: the elderly Kentucky gentlewoman, the crunchy Californian, the Texan Cowboys fan, and astonishingly, these people exist in real life as if formed by the silver screen. In many ways they have been. In America more than anywhere else I’ve been, the TV is a mirror. This is not to say American TV is realistic, because it’s not. American program making conforms to none of the conventions of documentary realism; it’s pure fantasy which seeps out of the tube and takes hold of American reality.

How is this possible? I think mostly because of the sheer distances involved. Outside the major cities there are large patches of isolation, and isolation breeds differences, in some cases huge differences. The TV negates some of this distance, brings a far larger circle of acquaintances into the living room than would normally come visiting. Imagine, for example, the culture clash that would occur between a Bostonian banker and a Texas farmhand.

In the UK we have a centuries old class system, antagonisms and alliances which define us as part of the same lump of people. Whether we love or hate another group we are inextricably bound to them. America does not have this socio-historical mesh; instead it has a powerful national myth. It’s there in the endlessly repeated fluttering stars and stripes, and it’s there in Hollywood movies and on TV. Its message is “We are all Americans.” So what if you’re a Boston office worker and wear $800 designer Italian shoes? So what if you’re a Texas rancher with a ten-gallon hat and work-roughened hands? So what if you can’t agree on politics, sports, or religion? There is always one thing you can agree on. You are an American, and so is he. The myth, the stars and stripes, and all that go with it are a mental cement to unite the people of these diverse and remote states.

If Europe were ever to unite to the same extent a huge amount of time and money would need to be expended in creating a unifying myth strong enough to convince Sicilian olive-growers, Dusseldorf brewers, London bankers, Cork farmers, Parisian chefs and Marbellan hotel managers that they are all citizens of the same country. It would need to be strong enough to conquer the smaller national myths and also to conquer a history of rivalry, squabbling, feuds and wars. Before I saw America I would have said it wasn’t possible to brew a myth that strong. Now I’m not so sure.