Okay kids, it’s the last Wednesday in July, and today is National Aunts & Uncles Day AND National Coffee Milkshake Day! Take it away, Wickeds and readers, in any direction you choose.
Liz: I LOVE anything coffee flavored, as you may have guessed. Coffee ice cream is right at the top of the list. Here’s an awesome recipe for a coffee milkshake (and you can use vanilla-flavored cashew or almond milk instead of regular milk). Enjoy!
Sherry: My closest aunt and uncle aren’t blood but close college friends of my parents. My Aunt Pat and Uncle John were glamorous, generous, and funny. Everyone loved being around them. As for coffee flavored anything, I will pass. I like tea.
Edith: My closest aunt and uncle are/were my aunt Joan and uncle Richard Reinhardt. Jo was my father’s baby sister and Dick her handsome devoted husband. She, always with a tinkling laugh and complete attention on anything you said, passed away a few years ago in her early eighties.
Dick, a San Francisco author and intellectual, missed her terribly, but has found a way to carry on, healthy and traveling at ninety with a new companion. Jo and Dick were my role models for a long-lasting relationship fueled by good food, conversation, and affection. My sister Janet has been a fabulous aunt to my sons, too. What a blessing.
As for coffee milkshakes, bring it. Hundreds of miles of solo driving are made possible by chocolate milkshakes with instant coffee stirred in. Try it. You’ll be good until Albuquerque.
Jessie: I live near to my sisters and they, and their spouses, have been wonderful aunts and uncles to my children. I also have been so lucky that my Aunt Pat and Uncle Ted are passionate geneologists and have generously shared so much information, memorabilia and memories. I can’t remember the last time I had any sort of milkshake but perhaps today would be a good dy to try a coffee flavored one!
Julie: I LOVE coffee milkshakes, aka frappes here in New England. It used to be a flavor option at McDonalds (maybe still is at some of them). I don’t drink many frappes these days. I do have an occasional frappachino, though calorie counts at Starbucks gives me pause. As to aunt and uncle day, my favorite role in this world is being Aunt Julie. Truly a blessing on so many levels.
Barb: Aunts and uncles are the best. All children should have adults who are not their parents in their lives. As for milkshakes, I don’t have them often, so when I do, I always go with my favorite–vanilla.
Readers: Share your fave aunt and uncle, and your memorable coffee milkshake!
I had an aunt who was a children’s librarian! How lucky was that? She was my mother’s only sister, loved kids, and my sibs and I were in our teens before she had her own children.She was a very special person in our lives and in our children’s too. Much missed. And I don’t like coffee. Or milkshakes. Tea for me, please.
What a wonderful aunt!
I had wonderful aunts and uncles. My first husband and I were both “onlies” so our kids have no uncles or aunts or cousins.! Love coffee. “Murder Go Round” was featured last month on Mystery Playground’s Drinks with Reads and included a heavily Caffeine-laced version of rum and coke. Beats milkshakes!. Try it at http://www.mysteryplayground.net/2017/06/dark-moon-coffee-and-murder-go-round.html
Sounds yummy, Carol.
I always loved coffee milkshakes, but they were hard to come by in New Jersey (my own teen-age version: take milk, add coffee ice cream, blend). So I was in seventh heaven when I arrived in Massachusetts for college and discovered the local places like Bailey’s and Brigham’s offered them–as frappes, as Julie pointed out.
I never knew my father’s siblings until later in life, but we had a clutch of honorary aunts and uncles when I was growing up–mainly friends of my parents’ from their twenties: Auntie Nan and Uncle Paul, Auntie Bev and Uncle Bruce, and Auntie Jean and Uncle Put (his real name was Borden, but his surname was Putnam). They filled the bill nicely!
Honorary aunts and uncles are awesome. Hugh and I are honored to be same with our two young friends.
I have some of the best aunts and uncles around–there for everything, almost surrogate parents. Since we don’t have kids of our own, my husband and I try to be there in the same capacity for all of our nieces and nephews.
And coffee milkshakes sound AMAZING! I definitely see that in my future this afternoon!
We all need a surrogate parent here and there!
I’m with Sherry – I’ll pass on coffee-flavored anything.
Aunts and uncles? Sadly in my case, no. The ones who lived out of town were remote. I’d get cards for birthdays and Christmas, but when they visited things were…stiff. The uncle in town was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He was on medication, but he’d say very off-the-wall things when we were around him that we kids had to ignore. (When I was getting ready to go to college, Uncle Jim said, “That’s a waste of money. You should go to secretary school because that’s the only job women are good for.”)
My kids are a bit luckier. My brother-in-law comes to visit frequently; he’s the “favorite uncle.” My brothers and sisters don’t visit all that often, but they at least stay in touch and we see them when we go back to visit my dad in Buffalo. My brother who lives in Virginia joined us on the “great D.C. college tour” and we dog-sit for him every summer.
Sounds like your kids lucked out!
Coffee frappes! Yum. We don’t have them easily available here but then we don’t have the Eclipse Coffee Syrup here either. I buy it in Massachusetts when I visit. That and Bakewell Cream. Both items became staples I purchased for friends when visiting relatives there!
I do still have hot fudge over coffee ice cream though. A habit I developed long ago. Used to almost make a lunch out of that in summer!
Must text my uncle today!
I haven’t heard of that coffee syrup, Doris. Sounds yummy.
Why would you ruin a perfectly good milkshake by adding coffee to it?
I’m very close to my uncle and aunt on my mom’s side. My aunt and I share similar taste in books, so shopping for her at Christmas is easy.
And, like Julie, one of my favorite things in the world is getting to be Uncle Mark. My niece and nephew are absolutely wonderful! And no, I’m not biased at all.
I wish I were closer to my nephews – they didn’t live nearby after they were very young, and now they are all over 40!
Chocolate milk shakes are the only kind for me! In high school I briefly tried out strawberry milk shakes but soon went back to my beloved chocolate.
My Uncle George(our mom’s brother) and Aunt Bernie were my youngest sister’s godparents. They were an enormous source of moral support and encouragement when our youngest sister had a major mental breakdown when our mom died. They continued to provide support and encouragement for the rest of their lives. My Aunt Mary, our mom’s sister, was a positive, cheerful, upbeat person despite numerous hardships in her adult life, which included grave heart problems and a husband disabled from Parkinson’s disease, whom she could not care for at home due to her own health issues. If you didn’t know any of this, you’d probably meet her somewhere and think she had a perfect life. Whenever I think of her, I see her beautiful smile and hear her laughter.
You have some very sweet memories, Deb.
Good thing I happened to pick up some cold brew coffee ice cream the other day.
Yum!
I’d like some coffee ice cream on a warm brownie.
suefarrell.farrell@gmail.com