Homemade Vanilla

Get an early start on this great Christmas Gift. 

Well I made this last year for Christmas and it was a big hit. Great for all those people you would like to get something for but just don’t know what, including but not limited to, teachers, pastors, secretaries, and grandmas.

I found lots of different recipes online and talked with a few friends, who have made vanilla, then I threw most of that out and did whatever I wanted and it came out great. So here was my process…

Ingredients:

Vanilla beans (I used 10-12)
Vodka (though I read you can use rum too, most people say vodka)

Large Glass Jars with tight lids

Small (4oz) Glass Jars with lids (for the individual gift size once your vanilla is ready)

Knife or Kitchen Scissors.

Small Funnel

Time (about 2 months)

First I researched vanilla beans, it seems that vanilla beans are sort of like wine, in that they come with hints of this and hints of that. I found a really great comprehensive overview of vanilla beans on the Vanilla Garlic blog. I then selected Mexican Vanilla beans to make my vanilla, and purchased them from ebay.

Here is my step by step process…

Wash some large glass jars. I used quart canning jars ‘cause I had them, you can use any glass jar with a tight lid, I also used 2 in order to make the quantity that I wanted. Again you can make as much or as little as you would like at a time.

Cut the beans up the middle to about an inch of the top (so they stay together).

Put the beans into the glass jar(s) I had about 4 in each jar.

Pour vodka in, and close lid tightly.

Shake (a lot).

 

Put in a dark cool spot (our basement was perfect). Here is the progression of our vanilla.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 14

Let it sit for about 2 months. Shake about every week or so.

Day 60 (ish)

 

Prepping for the small glass jars.

I cut my vanilla beans all the way through now so I had half a bean for each jar. This allows for my recipients to have unlimited vanilla (more on that latter.)

Put 1/2 a bean in each small glass jar.

Pour vanilla into the small jars, a little funnel makes this so much easier and less messy. I found my funnel in the camping sections of Walmart or Target (I forget)





Attaching a label to your jar is a nice finishing touch. The label should tell them to shake the vanilla before using it (to get the best flavor).

My label also includes instructions on how to make your vanilla last forever. What you wanna know how to do that too… Well here it is…

When you use about half of your vanilla from your container fill with more vodka shake and let sit for a week or so, then you have vanilla ready to go. If you refilled after every use you would ALWAYs have vanilla ready to go. It is just that simple.

Thanksgiving Menu Planning

Well the first step in planning a Thanksgiving meal is to plan the menu. There are some items that are fairly widespread traditions when it comes to Thanksgiving meals. They are:

Turkey (like you didn't know that)
Stuffing and gravy
Cranberry Sauce
Corn on the cob
Green Beans (sometimes in a casserole)
Winter Squash
Peas
Carrots
Turnips
Cornbread, Rolls or Biscuits
Dumplings

Pies: apple, chocolate meringue, mince, pecan, sweet potato (yam), pumpkin

Now your dinner may also contain  traditions that have been passed down in your families through generations. That's great. We do not include all the things listed above in our meals and we sometimes add other things.

My husbands family usually has A Lime Pear Jello salad, home made rolls, from a secret family recipe that I wont be giving on here (cause we probably wont make them this year but Shh don't tell my mother in law), salad and some of the other traditional items.

In my family Oreo ice cream pie has become a tradition, (my family tends to be a little more on the traditional side though).

So this year with no family coming into town we have the freedom to break traditions, or really start some of our own. We will be bringing with us some of our favorite pieces from our family's meals and creating our own unique to us dinner.

On our Menu:

Breakfast: (Oh yeah it's an all day affair)
Cinnamon Rolls - These are a husbands family tradition.

The main meal:
Turkey - a big 25lb job cause we love lots of leftovers.
Stuffing - This is my mother in laws recipe that is the only stuffing in the world I have ever liked.
Gravy- 'nuf said.
Mashed Potatoes - We do the "not good for you" white potatoes here (something from my family).
Cranberry Sauce - The recipe for this I am taking from here and is for a pear cranberry sauce
Butternut Squash- Gotta have some orange on your plate.
Peas - They are our 4 year old's favorite and something green.
Rolls - These probably wont be the ones from the secret family recipe cause I recently learned how to make bread and rolls in a super easy way and will do that cause it saves time.

Dessert:
Sweet Potato Pie or Pumpkin we haven't quite decided yet
Apple Pie

Next I'm going to address how we handle cooking all this food and what can be made ahead of time and suck. Remember this is only our 2nd Thanksgiving all on our own so if we can do it you can do it too.

We are also deciding now who to invite to dinner, so if you want an invite put in your application now (heh heh)

Introducing.... Preparing Thanksgiving Dinner...?

You are thinking, you know what Thanksgiving dinner is nothing new, The Pilgrims and Indians celebrated it hundreds of years ago. I know that, I do, really. But when I was growing up we almost never had Thanksgiving at my house and even if we did we didn't prep all the food ourselves, other family members would bring dishes to contribute. I grew up with all my family living about 30 minutes away from me, my Grandparents (on both sides), aunts, uncles and cousins. So every year I eat a lot of Thanksgiving dinners. We would have one at my moms side and one at my dad's side. When I was in my 1st year of college I also started to attend a dinner at my boyfriends families as well. Then I got married (to previously mentioned boyfriend), and not only attended the two dinners at my grandparents, and my in laws but my parents also started to have one with just my sister, me and my husband (and our kids once they came along). So "in my prime" I was eating about 4 FULL Thanksgiving dinners every year.

If at this point you are tired of my "life story" then you can skip to the point of this blog that will be marked with *** down towards the bottom.

Then something wonderful happened 2 years ago in 2009 my husband had to travel for work the first week in November for 2 weeks. It promised to be a hard, grueling and torturous assignment so for moral support I accompanied him. We sent our, then 2 1/2 year old, daughter to her grandparents. Then we packed up our bags and got on the plane and flew to Hawaii (I told you torturous). I spent my days lounging on the beach of Waikiki, strolling the open air markets, visiting the pool, taking naps, and seeing the Polynesian Center, while my husband worked. At night we went out for walks on the beach, nice diners, drives up the coast and swimming in the ocean.

When we got back we were exhausted. I do mean that literally. In once sense we were recharged in another we were so tired of travelling. So we told out families (to their disappointment) "We are not coming to Thanksgiving this year!" To that we were kinda given the "well can we come down to see the grandchild" And we said "No!"

That is how it all began.

So now we are getting ready for our 3rd Thanksgiving "On our own." Last year both of our families came down and we had more people here then we had beds for and more people here then we had chairs for at dinner. To top it all off I was 8 month pregnant with our 2nd daughter.

Our 1st year was just us, but we didn't have lots of time to prepare for it, plan menu items and prep food. So it was a "small" (the turkey was a 20lb+ number) meal with few items on the menu but plenty of food.

Our 2nd year we got something from everyone and it was a large meal and very hectic (did I mention I was 8 month pregnant?).

*** This year we are planning ahead. We are not having any family in from out of town and haven't invited any "locals" over (yet). And that brings me to the point of this blog.

I am going to be giving recipes for our menu items here and helping you (who are not veteran Thanksgiving meal makers) prepare for the big day.


Today is step 1. If you choose to get a fresh turkey then NOW is the time you need to be ordering it. Call a local butcher or such and get that baby ordered. Then you just pick it up when you are ready (for us that will be Wednesday before Thanksgiving).

Cloth Napkins (Reduce, Reuse)

Well it dawned on me when I was filling the napkin holder for the millionth time lately that we use just plain too many napkins. Now I have a young child and a husband so napkins get used a lot at meals to wipe messy faces. So decided that cloth was the way to go. I do plenty of laundry so throwing some napkins in with a load seems like no big deal.

So after convincing my husband this was a good idea I went off to buy fabric. I didn't buy anything special as far as a material but I did find some pretty fall fabric (cause Turkey Day is right around the corner). I also bought some Christmas fabric and a pretty cream colored with white snowflakes so I would have a Christmas set and a winter in general set. (You can see these fabrics to the right.)


Here is what I bought
2 yards of each kind of fabric.
Tread
(Wow that is complex)

You will need to decide what size you want your napkins to be. A typical "Dinner" napkin (like you would get at a fancy restaurant) is about a 16" square. I made mine more like the size of a typical paper napkin at about a 13" square.
With a 16" square (and standard 45" fabric) 2 yards will get you about 8 napkins, a 13" square will get you about 12 napkins.
I was more concerned with with quantity over size, even if I used them for Thanksgiving dinner they don't need to be so big in my book, but you are making your own custom napkins so they can really be what ever size you want.

Step 1: Cutting
First wash and iron your fabric, I ironed the fold down the center the fabric back in so that it would make cutting easy for me.

I cut 14" squares (to make 13" when finished), but first cutting a strip of fabric 14" wide off the fabric (width wise).

Then cut 7" off the FOLDED side (you know cause 7x2 is 14). 

Then measure 14" on the remaining fabric (for me I only had to cut off about a 1/2" from the salvage edge).



Do this for all of your fabric.

I then ironed all the fabric to remove the crease from the folded line in the fabric.

Step 2: Pining and Mitering
Next turn in a 1/4" seam and iron flat

Turn it in one more time at 1/4" so you have a double fold seam.

I added 2 pins in the center of the side at this point.

Repeat in a clockwise or counterclockwise if you are left handed (heh heh heh) around the other 3 sides.

Now if you choose you can add some more pins and sew your napkin like it is with the square corner. I chose to Miter my corners to make them look sexy. So if you don't want sexy napkins then skip to Step 3.

To miter....
1. Open your corner and locate the square made by the folds from your hem (I drew lines with a vanishing fabric marker to make it easier to see in pictures but you don't need to do that).

2. Cut the corner off above the square.

3. Fold the corner back down, the fold will be at the bottom corner of the square (I circled the point on my picture to help you see it)

4. Now refold your 2 sides at the original crease lines. And pin.

5. Repeat step 1-5 on the other 3 corners.

Step 3: Sew
Now sew close to the inside edge of your hem (but not so close that you go off the hem like I did oops). Stay as straight as possible and stitch around the napkin, making nice 90 degree corners in your miter.

TaDa! You have a napkin.

Now you just need to repeat Steps 1-3 for each napkin. Don't worry they get quicker as you go.