Prepping for Winter

I know, I know. It’s Halloween.

Gooey, lovely vanilla beans.

I should be posting Halloween food and related merriment.

But most likely, by the time you read this, I will have a belly ache. I will have pilfered through my son’s candy buckets in search of the good stuff—the mini Twix, the tiny Almond Joys.—for the past three hours and I’m likely drinking Alka Seltzer through a straw with the back of my hand to my forehead conjuring up my best Scarlet O’Hara.

So as I write this a few days in advance, I am thinking about winter and how to best prepare for it. I’m not talking the utilitarian, ingenious canning, either.

I’m talking Christmas, people!

Each year I get caught a week or two out from the grand day with very little to show for it when it comes to our close friends. We love these people. We see them (sometimes) daily, but for some reason I don’t connect them with Christmas (and that awkward moment when they have a brightly wrapped gift for you and you’ve got nothing but panic and embarrassment to offer).

Fear not, brave reader!


After one of my many refills. I love to
bake. Can you tell?

Last year my mom casually mentioned seeing homemade vanilla extract on a blog somewhere. That’s the language we communicate in—blog. We’re pretty much fluent in Pioneer Woman and Smitten Kitchen.

It happened to be the one nugget of information that didn’t slip through my goldfish brain that month and I secured a rather large jug of brandy and a bag of fresh Madagascar vanilla beans (thanks, Summit Spice & Tea!) that next week and set to steeping.

 I loosely followed a recipe here or there (and for your reference, here’s a great one) but basically I gave my sweet beans a boozy bath in a dark place for seven weeks and they gave me the best tasting baking accoutrement since brown sugar. It's pretty hard to mess this process up, despite my best attempts at it. The result?



Dang! That stuff is tasty.

I bought a large apothecary bottle at the vitamin store (yes, they have those and I still follow the Hulk's stellar advice like the good Hulk-a-maniac that I am). I  funneled the newly minted extract in because I thought homemade vanilla out of a Ziploc storage container just didn’t look right. (It didn’t.) And I haven't bought vanilla extract from the store since...mostly because I dont' have to (that made a huge amount of it) and totally because I don't want to.

To put it in perspective,  I had six vanilla beans and large (with the handle, even) jug of brandy. I used a big round plastic storage container with a lid (found in the grocery store right next to the plastic sandwich bags that I'm probably killing the environment with). Final ingredient was the top shelf of my messy, messy closet. Your alcohol can vary..some choose vodka. Others bourbon. I just happen to think brandy lends itself well to the task and who on earth wants to eat a vodka cookie? Wait. Don’t answer that.

(And yes, I know the clear alcohol does a bang-up job of extracting the flavor. I was really kidding.)

This year, I had P buy more brandy (because my license had expired and I fool myself into thinking I might still get carded). I bought the beans and ordered a dozen 2-ounce apothecary bottles. Voila! Christmas magic for me and my beautiful friends.

You should try it. Your cookies (and your lucky friends) will thank you. I might even thank you if you give me a cookie!

Happy eating (or brewing, as the case may be)!