Cooking In The Dark

0:00It is more of the best of the cooking in the dark show. Welcome to Cooking in the Dark. The kitchen. I will go to the kitchen. And although some recipes I cannot breathe. Still, I'm sure I can do everything I need. This show cooking in the dark, it is the key. He's a mighty topative Texan. You know Cheryl should tell himself. I know Dale Campbell would like to welcome you to this hair show. Cooking in the dark is a presentation of Blind Mice Megamall at www.blindmicemegamall.com Welcome to Cooking in the Dark. I'm Cheryl Cummings, and I'm going to introduce to you the man who proves to us every week

1:01that you don't need sight to cook dinner tonight. Dale Campbell. All right, all right, all right. Hey, um, Cheryl, where'd you put it? What? Where'd it go? What? The whole dang year. Isn't it amazing? I mean, first you think like it's never going to end and then boom. I know. Well, I guess we'll see. We record our shows early, so we haven't come to the end of time at the Mayans predicted, you know, the end of the world. What's cracking me up is all the people that are stocking up food and supplies for the end of the world. I'm like, man, it's the end of the world. What are you doing it for? They want to be around after. It's not like the Y2K thing, you know? But again, 2012 is over. It is?

2:01It's over, man. And you know what? That means for us a three week vacation. Hurray! People out there going, man, you've already been, you know? Debbie Anderson. I know she's going, man, you already been on vacation. Two weeks. What's up? Hey. We had some circumstances come up. Your host was sick. You didn't need him sneezing all over the audience and all over the crowd. All over the food. Oh, yeah, bad dad. Oh, it's terrible, man. I felt like I swallowed a, swallowed a, um, a brillo pad or something. My throat was killing me. Oh, it was nasty. I had a terrible headache. I was just sucking down those throat lodges. They were just, oh, man, it was terrible. But it came, we came out of it all right. Still here. Still kicking. Yep. So, 2013, girl. Yes. Well, let's talk Christmas real fast. Yes. What's on your Christmas list? Um, well, I keep asking Tim for a house. Okay. I, I think that's like, you know, a doable thing. He keeps telling me it's not a deal.

3:02Well, you know, I had to tell Tim, I saw a hell of a deal on, um, on, on this Barbie house with a detached garage. And it didn't. You need to specify. I should, I, thank you for bringing it to my attention that I should specify. What type of house? Where footage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My little brother was like, man, I want a car. I want a Camaro. You know, when I turned 16. So on a 16th birthday, you know, I knew he wasn't getting a Camaro. So I went and bought him a plastic model of a Camaro. Oh. Here you go, brother. Here's your Camaro. Oh. One you could drive. Wow. I understand. Sorry. Oh, thank you for helping me to understand that I will specify now. Yes. Please. Yeah. Add a little more detail because you never know what you're going to get. This is true. So when Christmas, I told my mom, I needed socks, you know, and every present I opened, there was three or four pairs of socks in a pan. Probably craziness.

4:02And the funniest one was when I was living here and she was in Kansas City and I took off to go up there and my neighbor came over and said, hey, I want you to take this to your mom. It's, you know, dinner plates and stuff. I'm like, oh, okay. I didn't think anything about it. That's the great, the great year, man, because I took it up, you know, took this package up. I mean, I even carried it in the cab of my truck because it was, you know, I thought plates. I didn't want them to get broken or something. And we get up there and I have to sneak grandma out of the house because mom's having gas logs installed in her fireplace. And then I have to get mom out of the house because I'm putting up, she wanted these little folding doors, you know, to separate her hallway off from her living room. So it kind of worked out well, you know. So I got, I said, okay, I'll take grandma out and while mom was doing that, grandma and I were over putting the folding doors in at mom's house. You know, and then the best thing was we put a bow on it at mom's and had the doors there and she walked in and didn't notice them right at first. It was like, oh, cool. And then grandma didn't notice the gas logs either until mom, you know, turned them on

5:02Christmas morning. And then when we went, ready, I pulled that box up and I go, here, mom, this is from Phyllis and Clyde, she goes, oh, no, that's yours. It was like the sausage it bought me. So it was like, oh, my gosh, that was the great year that everybody got everybody, you know. That was a lot of fun. Oh, that's fun. This was time. It was good, good, good. You know, we've been seeing, like, they've had all the Charlie Brown specials on TV and the Grinch that stole Christmas is still my favorite. That was on the other day. So it's just a good time. Good time. Good tidings. Good fun. Good year, man. New years is right around the corner too. So what is your New Year's resolution? Oh, well, I've already signed up for a new gym. I think we did this last year. We did, but we're trying again. All right. Well, listen, y'all, Merry Christmas, Debbie Anderson, I know you're one of our faithful listeners. I also want to send a shout out to Jim and flow party.

6:03There are some loyal listeners. They're good people too. If y'all are loyal listeners, we need to know about it. We want to know right now we got four. I know. I was like, Debbie. And two of them were Cheryl and I. I was so excited. Debbie, that's so awesome. You actually listened. Yeah. Right. And what's more, she likes the show. I know. I was blown away. I know. People need to seek psychiatric help. Well, anyway, anyway, you know, there was this cowboy Cheryl and he rolled into this town. He was from Texas and he was going up. He was over in New Mexico and he knew this town. He heard stories of this town where these towns people like to play pranks on newcomers and stuff. So he rolls in and not rolls, but rides in, you know, and tethers his horse up and walks into the bar and bartender give me two fingers and bartender, you know, gives him his drink.

7:04And he drinks it and throws his money down and walks back out and his horse has gone. Well, he already knew, you know, he knew the townspeople did it. He knew what was going on. So he walked back in the bar and he says, y'all know, I'm going to have one more drink. And if my horse isn't back, I'm going to have to do what I did back in Texas. And he orders his drink, bartender fills it up, you know, he drinks it, throws his money down, walks out and sure enough his horse is there. And the bartender is all worried and kind of follows him out, you know, and he's like, oh, he's relieved to see the horses there too. And the townspeople were kind of all scared, you know, and bartender goes, by the way, what happened in Texas? What did you have to do in Texas? It goes, I had to walk home. Hi, y'all. It's a Christmas little, we're going to have a little Christmas fun today. We've got a couple little drinks for y'all. One of them is one of my favorites, but we'll, you'll just have to wait and see what it is.

8:04We'll see y'all on the other side, cooking in the dark. Now with more of the show, here's Cheryl Cummings and Dale Campbell. Welcome back to our show. What are we doing, Dale? I did even know. We're going to be doing a Christmas wasle. This is a, you know, wasle was one of those great drinks. I remember making this now. I've got one recipe for this and it makes gallons, you know? It's huge. You make it in one of those huge industrial percolator coffee pots. You know, it makes like 40 cups or 50 cups or something like that. And you put all your spices in the percolator tray and the little thing in the top and pour all your juices and everything in and just let it have at it. But this is a smaller version. This is a great one to do if you have an office party or go into somebody's house, have a little Christmas party. I remember one year we did Christmas caroling. Sorry. And we made, we actually made two batches of this because it was just so good,

9:08especially if you put a little spice rum in it. It makes you sing better too, I swear. Well, it makes you not care. You're having a good hard time. Buddy and I, we started singing off key on purpose. We got kind of upset. We were all having fun. And then it got to the point where we go to three houses, you know, and all the people, we don't sing songs. And then, all right, kids sing. You know, the kids sing jingle bells or something. And then, yeah, then it got to be like every two houses. And then the third house the kids would sing. We might head towards the end every other house. The kids were singing, you know. Oh my god. But anyway, but this is, this is a cool little recipe. It's made in a crock pot. If you don't have a crock pot, you can do it on your stove top, just as well. Just make sure one thing, when Cheryl reads the ingredients, we'll talk about it. Go ahead and read the recipe. It's very simple. It's very straightforward. And what I liked about it, it was, it doesn't take a very long, long time.

10:09Because when you hear a crock pot, I don't know about you, but I think hours and hours. But here we go. So you start off with two quarts of apple cider, two cups of orange juice, one cup lemon juice, five cups pineapple juice, two tablespoons of whole cloves, three cinnamon sticks, two tablespoons of all spice, and a quarter teaspoon of apple pie spice. And then you can sweeten the whole thing to taste using sugar, a sugar substitute or honey. And something right there too, when sweetening it, if you don't have my finger to put in it, to make it really sweet, go ahead and just, I would put the sugar and the sweetener out on the side and let people sweeten it themselves. Oh, that's a good idea. Personally, I don't think it needs any sweetener. Doesn't sound like it. That's me. Now, let's go back through this. Okay, two quarts of apple cider.

11:09Right. Okay, and then what was the next one? Hold on. Two cups of orange juice. Okay, two cups of orange juice. Right. And a cup of lemon juice. Okay, so you're up to two quarts and three cups. Right. Oh, five cups of pineapple juice. Okay, so now we're up to eight cups, which is two quarts again. So we're up to four quarts. Okay, and then then you need your spices. That's all liquid. So the point I'm making is don't use a three and a half quart crock pot to make this, or don't use a four quart pot. I mean, use at least a six, if not an eight quart pot, with a crock pot, if you have a six quart or an eight and a half quart, you want to use that. Otherwise, you'll be like back when we made reindeer food. Oh, my gosh.

12:09Running around looking for things. Oh, my gosh. I needed a trash can to make that crap in. And I'm sure it was, oh, yeah. It says here it makes 80 servings. Oh, my gosh. That was nuts. Okay, but very easy. We're going to pour in our apple cider. Yep. Okay. And then our five cups of orange juice. I've already got this measured out. Five cups of pineapple juice, two cups of orange juice. Oh, I'm sorry. Five cups of pineapple juice. There's four of them. Let me get the fifth one here. What I use was our perfect measure in our beakers. Okay. And we're all just going all into the crock pot here. And then we need two cups of OJ. Two cups of orange juice. Got it. And then one cup of lemon juice.

13:11Okay. There we go. Okay. Now, let's add our spices. All right. Now, one idea is instead of just dumping your spices in, is to put them in cheesecloth. If you don't have cheesecloth, something else that works really nicely is a coffee filter. Something that'll keep all your spices together, especially the all spice and the cloves. The cinnamon sticks we're going to break up when we put those in. So we need two tablespoons of whole cloves. Whole cloves. And three cinnamon sticks. And two tablespoons is going to be almost two of these little, we got these little bitty containers here of all spice.

14:12So two cloves, all spice, put that in. There's another one. Okay. Cloves. Now, what I'm doing is I'm putting these into, onto a coffee filter. Now, these you can pick up. Gosh. I mean, if you don't, a lot of coffee pots nowadays, they have reusable filters. But these coffee filters are excellent for also soaking up grease if you're cooking, you know, in the microwave using as a cover. Oh, I think you talked about this before. What I've done is I've just put these, I've just kind of put my coffee filter down into a coffee mug. Okay. Mm-hmm. Then we're just adding our spices on top. Now, the cinnamon sticks we're going to break up. Let me get those. Those are here.

15:12We've already broken them up. Let me just pour them in here. And then what you want to do when you get all your spices in. Oh, I forgot. The apple pie spice. Yeah. Where is that at? Just a little bit of that quarter teaspoon. Can you describe the difference between what, like, a whole clove looks like versus a cinnamon stick? A cinnamon stick looks like a cinnamon stick is probably about three inches long. Mm-hmm. Two and a half, three inches long. And maybe about a quarter of an inch in diameter. It looks like a section of a straw. Yeah. But it is kind of rough on the outside. And it's solid. But it's just a cinnamon stick. It's really cool. Now, a clove is little. A clove, to me, reminds me of a small brad or a small nail. Because they have a little head on them. And then they're only about, what do you say, maybe an inch long?

16:13Oh, it's that much. Yeah. You know, they're not very long. But they're kind of spiky looking. They do. They remind me of a little nail, actually. If you've never seen one, if you've ever eaten a ham and bit into one, that somebody didn't take out of a ham. Ooh, you'll know you've been into a clove. That caused a bitter face, your express. A bitter face, man. Now, a clove, too, with this recipe, leave your spices in as long as you want. But do it to taste. Okay? I mean, when we get out, when we get all of our spices put in here, and our crock pot, we're going to have it on high for 30 minutes, I usually leave my bag of spices in it for about 45 minutes to an hour. But if you leave it in too long, that clove, those cloves, will just overpower all your spices. And you won't taste the cinnamon anymore. You won't taste the allspice. You won't taste any of it. All you'll taste is the clove. Now, the allspice is just a bunch of little balls. I mean, it feels like little balls.

17:15So that's why I like putting them in either cheesecloth or some people put them inside of a tea ball, if they have a big and deep ball. Something like that that you can just dangle in and you can remove easily. But with this, I'm just pulling the coffee filter, the edges up, and kind of twisting it at the top. And then I've got a rubber band right here that I'm just going to loop around it. Where's my... there it is. I keep rubber bands, y'all, for this purpose. Rubber bands, too, make great ways to close bags. Chips, you know, crackers, whatever. Just kind of roll them, I roll the bags down and you can just put a rubber band around the whole bag. And it just makes a nice little way to seal it. Let me just do a couple twists here. I'm just doing the old twist of flex, you know, putting the rubber band around and just twisting it until it's tight. And there we go.

18:15We've got a nice little bag of spices here. We'll drop that into our crockpot. Turn that dude on high. Okay, hides the first setting. There's off high and low on our crockpot. Nice, simple and easy. But that's it. Let that go for 30 minutes and we'll be ready to serve some wasle. Now we've got some raw sugar out here, y'all. We have some sweet and low. And we have just regular sugar. And you could have honey also if you wanted. Oh, honey sounds good. I like honey. Honey's good. You know, this would be a good time if you have some of that honey that's crystallized. You use some of that. Oh, that's true. Because it'll dissolve in there as well. But it comes out hot, piping hot. Use a ladle to ladle it out. And it'll be Christmas time. But now you see why this is so easy and simple. Hey, you got a crockpot. Yeah, how big is it? Okay. I'm on my way. Again, apple cider, orange juice, lemon juice, and pineapple juice.

19:18And then your spices. Right. And if you want to vary the spices, you want to put a little more, a little more all-spice, a little less, a little more cinnamon. You know, just tailor it to your taste. And you're good. But use this first. Use this recipe as just your stepping off point. And see what happens with it. I think you'll be, you'll love it. And plus it smells so delicious. And you'll be filled with the Christmas cheer when you drink it. All right. We're going to take a little break. We'll be right back on the other side with another tasty treat. And this one's Santa Claus will love. So you better listen up so you can make it for Santa, or he will leave you cold and you're stocking. We'll be right back on cooking in the dark. Now, more of the show with your host, Dale Campbell, and Cheryl Cummings. All right, so we are back. Now, here is one of Santa's favorite drinks.

20:19No, it's not a gin and tonic. It might be a bud light though. I already eat a bud light, man. But it is actually hot chocolate. Hot chocolate. And this recipe we have makes a whole bunch. So one reason we like, I love making this this time of year. It's ideal to make. And then, you know, if you have some mason jars or something, give it away to friends and family. But you'll definitely want to save your containers after you make it to put it back into so you can have it there. And then store it. You'll probably have plenty left over to store in Ziploc bags, whatever. How many servings, Cheryl? I believe it makes about 80 servings. 80 servings. Now, this is awesome stuff. And one thing that Old Dale likes to use this stuff too, is I like to put a little bit of this in my coffee. Oh, very good. So Cheryl, why don't you go ahead and read us the recipe for this. Okay. And then we'll talk about mixing it up.

21:20So, in our previous thing, we had what, was it a four quarter, six quarter, six to eight quarter? Yeah, we had a six quarter. We had a six quarter. Oh, proper. Now, we're talking 80 servings. And we're talking, you need at least 12th quarter. Yeah, I use a 20 quarter pot. I've learned my lesson, man. We made that reindeer food. Man, I had to end up getting a dad trash bag out. That was crazy. That made so much. And that was, anyway, that was good stuff, though. All right, so here we go. We need two one pound instant chocolate mix, 12 and a half cups of dried milk. And that will basically be one box of just dried milk. One pound instant creamer, two cups of powdered sugar. Oh, that's it. That's all you need. That's all you need. Yeah. Now that the creamer, the instant coffee creamer that we use, I bought chocolate.

22:24Oh, that's a good idea. Okay. Chocolate, the chocolate mocha creamer. So, we're going to need the 12 and a half cups of powdered milk. All right. So, you know what, I'm going to just scoop this out. It just, just part of the box in. Well, I want to see. Are you going to try scooping it out? Mm-hmm. The last time I did this, I think it came out to be like, there's one. Tell me count. I'll lose count. Ooh, that hurts. It's the little one on the box. You know what's that little? Oh, the spout thing or? A little spout thing. It's sticking out on the inside of the box. It's kind of sharp. Mm-hmm. Not as sharp as somebody that can do long division in their head. Pretty good. Yeah, perfect. Okay, we're up to three. Three cups. Okay. Hang on. You're going to have to take up shoes in a second. Okay, four.

23:29Five. Six. We're halfway there. All right. How's it looking? Is it half of the box, would you say? Yeah, I'd say. All right. Seven. Uh-huh. I made this a few years ago and it really was fun. It was initially slightly overwhelming to see quite how much I was making. Oh, yeah. And the good news is that it keeps. It does not go bad. So even after like you've given it away and if you still have some left over. You know, as long as it's kept I think in a sealed container, it's good to go. It comes out to be a little over 12. Oh, well, that's perfect. I think 12 and a half, so. Yes, it's perfect. Yeah, and if you have like Cheryl said, if you have a 10 or 12 quart pot, that'll be perfect for this.

24:34Right. But you need a pot. Yeah, you need to pot big enough so that you can mix everything up. Yes. And it's definitely one of those things where. You don't want to use in a four quart pot. Uh-huh. A mixing bowl. You know, if I take my rings off here. And he's getting ready because it's a, it's a hands in type of job. Hands on job. Yeah. Okay. We need two cups of powdered sugar. Or convection or sugar. So get in here. I usually end up putting my sugar in a, in a ziplock bag, my powdered sugar. It comes in the box. You know, and once you open the box, what do you do with it? That's true. It's truly true. It's very true. And you can, well, you can keep the box labeled. But you can also like label the. Well, and what you can do is put it in your, in a ziplock. Right. And then roll it back up and put it back in the box.

25:36Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Yes, I have them ever now and then. That's quite well. Absolutely you do. Yes. You'll get a raise. All right. Now our creamer. Shake that out. Shake it out, baby. So one pound instant creamer. Is that just, is that the size of the box that you bought? Yeah, it's a 16 ounce container. Okay. Pretty much the standard size creamer. Okay. Now let me just get in here and just kind of start mixing this up a little bit. I'm using my hand, y'all, just digging in, going down to the bottom, picking up. The powdered sugar feels kind, I mean the powdered sugar. The powdered milk feels kind of coarse. The creamer and the convectioner's sugar, the powdered sugar, of course, are pretty fine.

26:36So what I'm doing is I'm just digging down into the bottom, lifting up. Just letting it kind of filter back down through my fingers. Now to my hand. Until it feels like we've got a good mix. At first when I first started mixing it up, I could feel like the powdered sugar all in one area. And the creamer all together. Right. And I could definitely feel the powdered milk by itself. Or it all feels mixed up. All right. And I've got to say, for me, when I started mixing this up just because I was like, oh my gosh. I took it over to my sink. And I actually put the pot inside of the sink because I'm like, I was at the time very close to the edge. Oh yes. If anything was going to spill, I wanted it to spill in the sink because it would then, you know, you just then take your pot out and rinse down whatever.

27:38So that is a great idea. Yeah. And the other idea, of course, is you could mix it up, you know, on a chopping mat or you could mix it like use a cookie sheet or something. So that if anything spills, it's not like all over your counter. Put a cookie sheet, that's a great idea. Put a cookie sheet under your pot or where you're mixing at. So if anything does spill over, it doesn't get all, I mean, it's easy to clean up. Plus where you spill, you can dump back in. Yeah. Oh I have. Okay, I just added the two one-pound containers of. Ooh, all right. Ooh, that feels really creamy. So let me do some more mixing here. And it must start in a smell chocolatey now. Oh my gosh, can't you smell it? Now we just need a candy cane and some miniature marshmallows and we are good to go. Wouldn't that be a nice present to get, hint hint?

28:42Yeah, a little jar of this with a couple candy canes tied to it. And what we want to do is you want to put about a one to two tablespoons of this mixture into hot water or I prefer milk. Just heating up some milk. Oh, that smells so good. Okay, I'm just still digging down to the bottom, lifting up, just wanting to make sure we get everything mixed up well. Nice and even. So spend a few extra minutes doing this. Yeah, this is one of my favorite little Christmas time deals here. I don't really make this that often but one thing that this will last me if I don't give a lot of it away. It will last me until probably Easter.

29:44Because I only put a spoonful or so in my coffee. And it adds a really rich, you know, mocha creamy feel. I don't know to the coffee. I mean, that's been my experience. Yeah, I mean, it's milk and creamer and then Nestle's quick which is chocolate and then a little bit of sugar. Yeah, delicious. Okay, I think we've got this mixed up pretty well. Why don't we take a quick break right here and we will come back and make some hot chocolate with this. We'll be right back, y'all. Cooking in the dark. Merry Christmas, Fidesz, Navidad! Now here's more of the show with Dale Campbell and Cheryl Cummings. Welcome back to our Christmas show about where are we cooking in the dark?

30:45That's where we are. Christmas. Christmas in the kitchen. Let me get my saucepan out here, y'all. I'm getting the one out that has the pour spouts on it. Put it on top of the burner here. Find our Fuego. Little Fuego. Now for little ones, they want to make some of their own hot chocolate. They got it. Show them how they can heat up their milk in the microwave. You might want to help them with that so they don't get it too hot and actually burn themselves. Since we've got quite a few folks here, we're going to go ahead and do ours on the stove top. Let me pour in about a couple of three cups of milk here. I've got the heat on a medium high.

31:45We don't want to get too hot. You don't want to burn it so we'll monitor it with our talking cooking thermometer. Let's see what we got here. 91 degrees already. We want to go up to about 110. Maybe a little hotter than that, I guess. 102. 104. Then we're moving trucking right along. We're up to 109. I'm going to go to about 112 or so. As it's on the stove, are you stirring or are you just leaving it alone?

32:49Just kind of moving it back and forth. Not really stirring it. Just kind of shaking the skill back and forth. 137. I don't think I was too close to the bottom. Let me take another read. Okay, I was too close to the bottom. We're about 120. That sounds like a good level. Yeah, that's not too bad. Not too hot, not too cold. The three bears would be just right. Goldilocks would be happy.

33:49Santa Claus is going to be really happy when he takes this here. One thing I've got is some of those containers. They hold about four cups. Yeah, four cups. They come with a one tablespoon server. That's what I use to give this away. I fill those up and then it comes with a little one tablespoon server. I put directions on there. Two tablespoons to eight or nine ounces of ten ounces, which is like a coffee cup. Okay. I've made you one and me one, Cheryl. I love hot chocolate and fruit with milk. It's Christmas. I think it's about time that we pay ourselves a little tribute. I'm going to take one of those candy canes you offered.

34:52Okay. There's one for you. One for me. And of course, we recommend what did we say? Like one and a half or two tablespoons of a... Yeah, I like putting two in. Mixed. One for me. Yeah, but you can experiment. Maybe you want two and a half. Maybe you want a chocolate ear. Yeah. Which, you know, way I feel about chocolate, if a little is good, a whole lot more is better. We won't tell anybody if you even went so far as to put in three tablespoons. How do you know I did that? I don't know. I think based on the ones now too, then a whole lot more is much better. That's what a Santa Claus likes is. Chocolatey. Drop in a few little marshmallows here. All right.

35:52Here you go. Got it. Lovely. Thank you. Cheers. Careful, top. Hmm. Ah, that's perfect. Excellent thing. That is yummy. All right, y'all. Hot chocolate is made and done. Let's take a little break. We'll be right back on cooking in the dark. 30 paper is playing on the jukebox. And mistletoe is hanging above the bomb. I want to thank you for this broken heart that I've got. Merry Christmas, girl. Forever in the world you are. Now, more of the show with your host, Dale Campbell, and Cheryl Cummings. All right, y'all. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. And happy hangover to you and yours.

36:52Oh, shoot. We're at a great show. What a way to end the year to this year. This is by far one of my favorite, little recipes, the hot chocolate mix. The wassel you will absolutely love. Love. And so will everybody. And again, I mean, I joked about putting some spiced rum in it. Yeah, you don't have to use rum. Just use vodka. No, no, no. It's very delicious. And like Cheryl said, it's very, it does not take a long. No. You know, which is really nice. 30 minutes in a cropped pot. Now that's funny. Because a long time ago, one of the first super bowl parties I went to, when's the food going to be ready? 30 minutes. Well, games started at 5.30. Food wasn't ready till one in the morning. Oh, my God. 30 minutes. So now that's our joke. Okay, dude. 30 minutes. Okay. Would you say 30 minutes to me? Like, oh, crap. That's a long time.

37:52It's like me learning when I was in the Dominican Republic that the word orita, which means, you know, which because of the ita, you're thinking, oh, it means it means like a little hour, less than an hour. Orita was usually somebody's way of saying sort of any time from now till, eh, whatever. You're now totally in the time. You're like, okay. I understand. I understand. All right. I wanted to read you that wasle recipe again. Okay, right. I love this recipe. And I definitely plan to use it this year. Here we go. A crockpot. 30 minutes. Two quarts apple cider. Two cups orange juice. One cup lemon juice. Five cups pineapple juice. And then your spice is two tablespoons of whole cloves. Three cinnamon sticks. Two tablespoons of all spice. And a quarter teaspoon of apple pie spice. That's it. That's it.

38:52Now remember, y'all, that's four quarts of liquid. Okay. So you want to make sure your crockpot is at least six quarts if not larger. Don't be putting it in a three and a half quart crockpot, which is, you know, kind of the standard, I mean, I think of a, when I think of a crockpot, I think of a three and a half quart as being the quote unquote standard size, you know. And then a six quart and an eight and a half quart being bigger. You can also do this on your stove top. You don't have to do it in a crockpot. Just have your put, put it on, you know, be on like medium low. You don't want high heat. You just want to bring it up to a simmer. You don't want it boiling. But your spices put those in, wrap them up in cheesecloth. Or if you don't have cheesecloth, like we did put them in a large coffee filter. Or if you don't have that, even a tea ball works great to put your spices. And you might even have to use two tea balls for the spices. But you want them in something that you can take out.

39:54You can extract because if you don't get those cloves out after, you know, if you leave the cloves in there, the cloves will overpower just two. Man, they will take, they just overpower your, your wasle. Wow. And you don't want that. You want to be able to taste that cinnamon and the, the all spice and the cloves add a nice accent to that cinnamon. And the apple pie spice too, that, that really works out really well. The apple pie spice, you can just dump in. You don't have to put it in with the, with your other spices. But I usually leave my, my spices in for about another, you know, for 45 minutes to an hour. Mm-hmm. And then pull them out and just keep, keep it on low. After it's heated up and, and let everybody enjoy it. So delicious, so delicious. Now the other great one we did today was the hot chocolate mix. And again, this is a great recipe not only to make and keep on hand for you and your little ones, but also to give to your neighbors, friends, somebody that comes over and reads for you,

40:54does you a favor? You know, my male lady always gets some of this. She loves it. So it's funny how people like, hey, man, did you make any of that hot chocolate mix this year? You know, we're a matter of that hot chocolate mix. Well, it's easy to make. Nah, nah, I'll just wait. I'll just wait. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. But go ahead and read that recipe. All right. So two, one pound instant hot chocolate mix. Just the, yeah, the chocolate mix, you know, that you've just put a couple spoonfuls and cold milk, and you've got chocolate milk. All right. And then 12 and a half cups of dried milk or powdered milk, and as we learned, that's one box of powdered milk. Yeah. One pound instant creamer. And Dale, you did a modification area. You used a hot, you know, you used a chocolate mocha. Yeah, the chocolate, the chocolate flavored. Yeah. And then you need two cups of powdered sugar, and that's it.

41:55Just mix it all up well. And then what I, what I try to do is after I add, I put the milk, the powdered milk in first, and then I add it to powdered sugar, and then I mix that up. And then I add the creamer, and I mix that up. And then I add the, the Nestle's quick, and then I mix all that up. So you can dump it all in, and then mix it all up at once, or I like to make, you want to make sure you get a good even mix. Otherwise, you're not going to have a good hot chocolate. You know, and then you want to, you can either use, put it in. You want to use 10 ounces of either water, or milk, I prefer milk, but you, water works just as well. You know, with water, you might use more than two tablespoons, just to get more of that chocolatey taste. Right. But either one will work heated up in the microwave, or on your stove top, like we did. Heating it up to about 130 degrees was just about perfect. It was still hot, but it wasn't overwhelmingly scalding, burn you hot, which was nice.

42:55And you definitely don't want to, you know, burn your milk. Ooh. Oh, dire sudden experience, you should not. You don't want to, that's right up there with burnt popcorn. Yeah. It lingers. It does, it does, it does. Well, y'all, we will be back to treat you with some more delectable winter treats. I've got some great soups on the line for you. Yum. We have a goulash we've been playing with. It's pretty daggum good too, but some of these winter, you know, would I consider foods for winter? You just never knew, never knew. All right. I'm Cheryl Cummings. He's Dale Campbell. Oh, whoops. I'm Dale Campbell. She's Cheryl Cummings. This is cooking in the dark. Y'all have a merry, merry Christmas, and a very, very happy new year. And I can't wait to hear about all those new year's resolutions when we come back. And how many you made, and how many are already broken. All right.

43:55We'll see y'all next year. Cooking in the dark is a presentation of Blind Mice Megamall, at www.blindmicemegamall.com. Cooking in the dark was produced by THC Productions. Oh, yeah.