Welcome to your next episode of Cytospell. I'm Megan, and I'm here with my sister Crystal. I'm really excited to be here today. Super excited.
It's going to be a great episode. In fact, the best episode ever, because it's time for the holidays. I just love talking about the holidays. The holidays are my favorite.
They're my favorite. Oh, we have a very special guest with us today. Oh, he's going to talk to us about some Christmas gifts. He is.
He's going to talk to us about flavored vinegar. I love flavored vinegar. I love flavored vinegar. Our very special guest is none other than our sibling, Justin Thomas.
Hello, ladies. I love to talk about good vinegar. I love a good vinegar. Flavored vinegar for the holidays.
Flavored flavored vinegars for the holidays are the best. I love what my favorite flavored vinegar is for the holidays. What is your favorite flavored vinegar? Raspberry vinegar.
Raspberry, that's a walk on the outside, for sure. Everybody loves my raspberry vinegar. I love a good whiteberry vinegar. Whiteberry, kind of evoking some summer in the middle of winter.
That's a great feeling. That's a great feeling. Wonderful. You can also do it with peaches.
A good peach vinegar. That's nice, too. I like to take a little bit of a walk on the outside. I prefer blood orange.
Ooh, blood orange. Delicious. All right, welcome to the Cytospell Podcast. That's our parody of our favorite Saturday Night Live skits, which we are in an educational setting, unable to tell you what it actually is.
So if you don't know, just go Google the top 10 Saturday Night Live Christmas skits, and it should be in the top three. If it's not number one, then I'm mad as I'll get out at Saturday Night Live and the people who vote. All right, so we're talking about the holidays. Really, we broke character there because none of us were going to make it for 15 minutes doing that.
Totally couldn't do it. So, homemade gifts for the holidays. Yes. I appreciate those the older I get.
Me, too. There's just something about them. This year, I really think that there's going to be more homemade gifts. I think so, too.
A little bit more time at home. I know some people are still quarantined, social distancing. More time to just be at home working on those things. And flavor vinegar is...
It is a legitimate thing. It is not a joke. Right, yeah, we didn't make up flavor vinegar. And I really do love blueberry flavor vinegar.
I really do love blueberry vinegar. And I actually love peach, too. That's funny that you said peach. Up in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, there are several places that you can get flavored vinegars and flavored olive oils now.
I don't know if you need that or not. I did not know that. It makes sense. I mean, there's a knife works.
Why not have a vinegar works? It is so fun to go into. But I think it's a little bit overwhelming. It can be overwhelming if you don't have a person there kind of guiding you.
Of course, now with COVID, there's no taste testing going on. But normally, they have it out there where you can taste test it. Anyway, I bought a bottle of vinegar home-to-make salad dress. And Chris will know this.
I always make homemade salad dress, especially at Christmas time. It is so delicious. It's a different vinegar. So delightful.
So delicious. Very delightful. And so I have been using this bottle of vinegar all year long, thinking that I was using blood orange, when in fact, it was peach. Well.
That's a little random. I don't know if I just grabbed the wrong bottle, but I enjoyed it so much. The blood orange. I have not seen blood orange vinegar, but I saw blood orange oil.
And I wonder. What did you just call it? Oil. And then you heard how far about it.
Oil. Okay, that brings us to it. Let's pause for one second. Before we hit record, they were talking about, I guess, what?
We're talking about a recipe, and we were talking about different kinds of chips, chocolate chips that we could use. And they said something about dark chocolate cake mix. And we said that we could add in caramel chips. After, I said, we'll put caramel chips in there.
And we said, no, it's caramel. It's caramel. Caramel. Caramel.
We could do this all day. Oil. It is oil. It's caramel.
Oil. Caramel. Ooh, caramel oil. I would try it.
That would be a great gift for the holidays. Anyways, I just thought I'd throw that out there that I was right in the wrong room. So, gifts. His feelings are still hurt from losing at the last game.
That's true, sorry. So absurd. All right, so gifts for the holidays. I will kind of kick us off on the thing that happens in my family, which I'm sure happens in many folks' family.
If you have older family, if you're blessed to still have older family around. My wife's grandmother, who passed in 2020, would always give us raspberry jam in an old little pickle jar. And I had no clue when it had been canned. And it still had the original pickle jar lid on it.
And it was completely unsealed. And my wife's like, I've been eating this for years. And I was like, don't care. Not eating it at the house.
Go in the trash. No, you can't put it in the trash. My mom made it. It's going in the trash.
So the only homemade gifts I've ever received have been in completely useless form because they've been in jars that you don't know how long they've been there or how many times that pickle jar lid has been used because there are no longer pickles in there. Well, we definitely want to recommend that you follow tested recipes and the right processes and the right equipment, the right gear. Gear. If you are going to be given a gift to someone for Christmas.
I think one of the big things is label it. Label it. I know your date. And the people that you don't like at work, you can give them the one from 2016.
Just kidding. No, one year. JK. So jamming jellies are something easy that you can make as a Christmas gift.
I know that Crystal and I both have already referenced this in a previous podcast, but we are a big fan of bell pepper jelly, making pepper jelly. Hot pepper jelly, y'all. So good. Over cream cheese.
Sweetie cracker. Can't go wrong. Yeah, so good. Also, if you make jamming jellies, you don't, like we think of the typical use of warmup.
For me, it's what, can I pour it over a block of cream cheese? Or can you put it on a piece of toast, that kind of thing. Or a biscuit. Or a biscuit, yeah.
Always a biscuit, yeah. But you can use jamming jellies as a meat glaze, too. So maybe for your Christmas ham, turkey. I have a great jamming jellies.
That would be a great meat glaze. Megan, I know if I've made this before as well. It's really disgusting when you say it like that. I'm going to have delicious meat glaze.
Delicious meat glaze. Is the orange jelly that I eat out of orange juice concentrate. It is perfect to make in the wintertime. Perfect to make in the wintertime.
And I'm trying to remember where that was. Is it all of the, um. It's from the National Center for Home. We are an incredibly prepared podcast with relevant resources and delicious treats.
There's your commercial while you're trying to find it, ladies. It's all of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It just uses a 12-ounce concentrated orange juice in that frozen can. You thaw that out, two and a half cups of water.
Pulp or no pulp? Your choice. It doesn't matter. I like eating a pulp.
I'm a pulp man. I'm a pulper. I'm a pulper in my orange juice when I'm drinking it, but I don't think I like it in your gym. Like, I'm a heavy pulper.
I like heavy pulper. You thought meat glaze sounded weird? So, anyway, two and a half cups of water, four and a half cups of sugar, and a box of powdered pectin. And it makes five or six half pint jars.
Super easy. Okay, here we go again. Delicious over cream cheese. But this time, I mean, you can have it with your club crackers, but try it with a graham cracker.
Oh, yeah. Try it with a graham cracker. What about a salting cracker? I mean, you can never go wrong with a salting, especially those little mini saltings.
Have you had the little mini saltings? They taste like the old-fashioned, what big saltings used to taste like. Anyway, there's my plug for mini salting. Get off my lawn.
You kids. Changing up my crackers. But, yeah, and that is a really simple recipe, and it's really nice for the holidays. So, something else that would be a lovely gift for the holidays is, I'm going to head back up to Pigeon Forge, okay?
The home that Nolly built. Right. So, when you're up there, there's a couple of these kind of specialty shops, and I want to see if y'all can guess what I'm talking about, that have different varieties of this product. Old Timothy Whiskey Moonshine.
I'm not encouraging you to make Moonshine at home, no, per gifts. Hot sauce. Like, all those different hot sauce places. So, it's really easy to make your own hot sauce, eight caps of diced tomatoes.
That's what they call me on the ball court, hot sauce. Oh, my goodness. One and a half caps of serrano peppers, vinegar, salt, and pickling spices, and you can have your own version of hot sauce that you can pass out for the holidays. I'm sure you can come up with a Kichine and make your own label, the JT's hot sauce.
Yeah. JT is the hot sauce. That's what they say on my label. Oh, no.
But, seriously, if I'm going to make my own hot sauce, you know, you just gave out some specs there on your recipe or kind of recipe, is there proven, tested recipes that I can do that with and give it up safely, or am I just going to do Mammal Walsh's raspberry jelly? That actually came from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, tested recipe. By the way, I know that sounded really condescending. I love Mammal Walsh.
God rest yourself. And I mean that with all sincerity, even though it's completely, I'm tired. It does not sound sincere at all. Another really yummy gift for the holidays, we talked about it in our last podcast, any kind of apple butter, butters.
Anything that is butter. Butters are delicious. All butter. I mean, you don't have to preserve this if you didn't, but I'm making a flavored butter for folks, like a maple butter.
Cinnamon butter. Yeah, garlic butter. Cinnamon butter, go. A biscuit.
Waffle fries are good, too. Sweet potato waffle fries. Oh, I bet. They were like, yeah, okay.
I just put a little gift together in my head right then. So I'm like, ooh, you've got a little thing of butter. Maybe have some kind of, like, your recipe, or I could put a mix together for biscuits or rolls or something like that. Have that in a basket with it.
Or since you're in Pigeon Ford, you can go to the Grist Mill and get some mix to make your own cinnamon bread. Perfect. There you go. Things I've missed in 2020.
Yeah, selling it to Pigeon Ford and got very cold. And paying $9 for a loaf that costs $0.27 to make. Right. I have tried to recreate it, and I have been unable to, and I'm pretty good at bread baking.
I cannot recreate it. So this has nothing to do with the holidays, but since you said recreation, I have to say it because it has to do with food, and that's what we do. Taco Bell chicken quesadillas, I've nailed it all except for the steamed feel of it. Really?
I have money in the bank, just FYI, which I'm not giving those out for Christmas because I will be eating them. I need that recipe. And I'll just say, I have a crock pot-type device that also steams. I'll just say, I bet you could put it in a steamer basket of that.
Well, game on. Maybe we will have that for our holiday celebration. We'll skip the turkey and the glazed meats, and we will go straight to the Taco Bell quesadillas. We'll do a whole episode on recreating your restaurant favorites.
There you go. So, another fruit that's popular at the Christmas time. The Christmas time. The Christmas time.
And the Thanksgiving. The Facebook, the Kroger's. You can buy these at the Walmart and the Piggly Wiggly. It's a berry.
Cranberries. Cranberries. So, yeah. Do you know those come in a can like jelly?
I love the can. I'm sorry. I love the gelled up. Yes.
You cut the lines of the can. You cut it on the lines with your butter. I love that. My seven-year-old, she will eat an entire can of it by herself.
I love cranberry sauce like that. I love it. But if you want to go out on a limb here, there's a great recipe for cranberry orange chutney. What all is involved with the chutney?
Chutney's going to be a little different. In this chutney recipe, again, you will never guess where I'm at right now. Pigeon Forwards, the house that Valley built. The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
Oh, the house that Georgia built. Fresh whole cranberries, two cups of white onion, golden raisins, white sugar, brown sugar, white vinegar, orange juice, orange zest, ginger, and cinnamon. You lost me at onions and raisins together. Well, you're creating a savory chutney.
Well, I mean, I'm following you, but you still, onions and raisins together just. I mean, it sounds a little weird. One of these things is not like the other. It says it's delicious over turkey, chicken, or pork.
I guarantee it. I like onions with apples and, like, cooked together with pork. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'll just eat my caramel.
What about a spicy cranberry salsa? Now, that sounds good. Well, I'm sorry, but it starts out with red onion. Well, minus the red onion.
Serrano peppers, vinegar, cranberries, of course, honey sugar, that kind of thing. So, something just a little interesting. We have made, in the previous class years ago for the holidays, a blueberry conserve. Ooh, I have made that, and it's amazing.
So, you're educating me here, because I've had chutney and I've had conserves and all this good stuff, but help us. What's a conserve? Help us. How would you best describe a conserve?
Yes, yes, yes. How would you best describe that to somebody who's like, mm, Thanksgiving dinner, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, versus what is a marmalade or a preserve? Yeah, essentially. So, jelly is, so we'll start with jelly.
It's just usually, like, the juice. It's going to be clear. It's going to be a little jiggle. Jams, for me, tend to be a little thicker.
Sometimes there might be some whole fruit popping up in the jam. Marmalade usually has a citrus. Sweet lady marmalade? Yeah, citrus.
Or a lot. It's usually citrus. It can have a rind in it, that kind of thing. And a conserve is made with, they're thick and chunky, and they might have, like, fruits or even nuts in them, cooked.
Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, walnuts, pecans, pecans, whatever you want to call it. Y'all don't have a debate about that, pecans, pecans? Pecans.
Did you just say pecan? You just said, did you just say that? Yes, because I pecan. Oh, mercy.
How are we sitting there? I don't know. Sometimes it hurts. So, you have lots of options of gifts that you can make for the holidays.
Totally. Totally. So, what gifts are y'all making me for the holidays? What gift do you want?
I'm going to give you the gift of my time. You going to mow the yard? No. I mean, this is South East Tennessee.
It'll be a foot high. No, we're going to go on a little signaling outing. Hey. Yeah, we are.
Yeah. It's going to be amazing. Any conserves? I don't think I have enough time between now and Friday to whip up some conserves.
Oh, come on. We'll see. So, wrapping up this episode, I'd like to ask y'all a question. Yes.
Is this the infamous top three returning? We're going to talk about the top three, but I am in the driver's seat of the top three. Yeah. Full disclosure here, Megan always choose me out after I turn the record off.
You never prepare me for the top three. Well, that's the point. It has to be a genuine top three. You cannot research it.
And choose you out is a very strong term. She chastises me. She does. She's choosing.
Chastises me. You can only have three items on your Thanksgiving table. What are they? Sweepedhead casserole, turkey, and pecan pie.
Turkey, dressing, or as I refer to it, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Interesting. So, my sweepedhead casserole is going to be the walnuts and brown sugar covered with no whipped cream on top. None of that like marshmallow.
No. I don't like the marshmallow either. I like the nice like crumble almost. Yeah.
My mom's, God love her, and if she happens to listen to this, which she never would, but she probably will listen to this. Hers is a watery-ish with marshmallows. My brother wears it out. But I'm not a fan.
No. My mama makes the brown sugar pecan. We do pecans because I'm allergic to walnuts. Yeah.
I like it. But now, if you ask me what three dishes were on my Christmas table, it would be a totally different answer. I wonder if we have like similar Christmas table dishes. George Brown's mashed potatoes?
Some of us. My mama's fancy mashed potatoes. How do you make a fancy mashed potato? They have a kind of bacon and like three different cheeses and breadcrumbs on top of their baked.
Oh. Oh. They are. Oh.
They are. They are. She serves that along with a standing rib roast set with a roasted beast. Man, my family sucks at Christmas dinner.
The roast beast would be number two on my table. That's a much of the day. The roast beast, George Brown's mashed potatoes, and then probably my third item on my Christmas table would be my sister's salad with the breadcrumbs. Oh, really?
It's interesting. I'm ashamed to even say my three because my family apparently sucks at Christmas dinner. Like, this has never happened at my house. I mean, it's essentially a repeat.
Mom does like Coca-Cola ham and raisin gravy ham, and they're both okay, but. Wait a minute. I've never heard of raisin gravy ham. It's a quote unquote Irish thing.
Oh, she'd be Irish and she'd be doing the rum raisin ham or rum raisin gravy ham? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Thank you. Raisin? Great, I'm Googling it.
Yeah, it's fine. I don't hate it. That is not good. Are you Irish?
She thinks so. We've got brown sugar, dry mustard, lemon juice, vinegar, raisin. No, no, that's on my mom's. Oh.
She's not using it at all. Let's ask you this question, brother, because. I'm just, yeah, ask me, but I feel disappointed. Before we do that, what is your three?
For Thanksgiving? And Christmas. Okay, for Thanksgiving, it's my mom's dressing, which is actually my granny's dressing recipe passed down. Yes, no, I should have probably said my mom is dressing, and not just any.
And then my mom's cranberry salad that's got cranberry sauce in it, but then there's like apples and vegans and stuff like that, and then just gravy, of course. All the gravy. Of course. And then what is your Christmas?
My Christmas is going to be the roast beefs and those potatoes. God's potatoes. And then I love ham. I've never been tasted like God's potatoes.
You are. I love ham. I'm a ham person, and so I'm going to forget my salad. I mean, okay, I'm just saying.
So what was your question for me? Okay, my question for you is, the other day, Kenzie Hickson, that is a new agent in Ray County. Hello, Kenzie. Hey, Kenzie.
She fits in perfectly with that. Neither one of y'all have met her, I don't think. Via Zoom. Via Zoom.
20, 20. She just wants you to spit right in with us. Like, you know, she has a kindred spirit. And yeah, it's great.
So anyway, she got a call when she was visiting here the other day. I'm her mentor. Bless her heart. Oh, Megan the mentor.
And so a lady asked about, she said she was making orange gravy, and she was worried because the dye from the oranges was leaking, like when she was going everywhere, and she wanted to know if it was still safe. Now, I've been an extension agent for 16 years. I didn't know they died oranges. Did you know they died oranges?
It's okay if you say no, you didn't know, because Crystal got in on this call when we were trying to answer it. I'm trying to understand if this is a trick question, like SarahKiteCollin about corn cow jelly. Okay. I said the same thing when she called me.
I said, are you like, no, just kidding. No, it was a real question. And I had never heard of it before either. So my immediate, when I thought of orange gravy, like my brain went to sawmill gravy.
I was like, you're making gravy with orange juice? Yeah, I didn't. But no, it's like an herb turkey gravy that has some orange in it. So actually, we looked at the recipe, I was like, that actually sounds pretty good.
But yeah, so we had to contact Dr. Bernie, or Kenzie did, and yeah, it's been great. It's fun. It happens.
It's been a practice done for years, and it's okay to eat. To make your oranges orange. Mind blown. My family sucks at Christmas dinner, and oranges are dyed.
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure not all oranges are dyed. I'm like, no. Apparently, it looks like most of them are from what we were reading.
Yeah, we were finding a lot of information. Yeah, that's a very common practice, is to, yeah. I'm holding my forehead. I don't even know what to do.
I'm so lost right now. I can't be seen. Interesting. I was like, you know what?
You learn something every day on this job. Literally, learn something every day. Well, we hope you learned something today, and prepare a holiday gift for somebody, because 2020's been long for everybody, so even if you're not a big holiday person for the love of Pete, just give somebody a flavored vinegar. Or a chutney.
Or a nice conserve. Yes, a conserve. Sounds delicious. I love conserve.
Conserves are my favorite. I'm not going to say that. It was a bad joke. And on that note, hang around after the tune here, and get some outtakes from this episode, because there are plenty.
Come on back and sit with us next time. From Hello, Ladies. Yeah, I did. You're proud of the soundling.
I'm sorry. Hi. Hello, ladies. It's good to be with you to talk about vinegar.
It's going to be a really good time. Everyone loves a good flavor of vinegar for the holidays. My favorite vinegar is a raspberry vinegar. Ooh, raspberry.
That's really going out there. Sorry. I got it right in. Hang on, hang on.
We'll do it like this. I love to talk about vinegars. I thought you said we're taking it from Hello, Ladies. I know.
I got really good.