Vanilla

Thanks to the inspiration of my oldest, I am beginning to think more deeply about making things from scratch.  She brought me a cute little blue bottle full of vanilla for my birthday, and I was thrilled.  A blue bottle alone would have been a great gift for me, but vanilla to boot?  Yumola.

But I haven't begun to use the extract yet for fear that it would be gone with a blink.  I comforted myself by starting my own vanilla batch.  I took an old beer bottle from an ale I found at Trader Joe's, I scraped off all the labels, and voila!  I have my vanilla bottle.

~ my bottle's brief foray into the afternoon light...it is now a prisoner of the dark ~

It is hard to even refer to this as a recipe, but here you go:

Three vanilla beans, cut open carefully so as not to spill one little vanilla bean. 

Insert into a bottle.  

Cover the beans with vodka.  

Close the bottle.  

Shove into the dark corner of the cookbook cupboard (or any dark corner will do.)  

Wait impatiently for vanilla to happen (approximately 3 months.)  

Shake the bottle every now and then.  

Enjoy!