Cooking with Coolio

I recently got a copy of Coolio's cookbook to review for Amazon. You can see my review here and all my book reviews here.
I got some of the thick wool-ease to make my son a scarf with. You know, after working with size 5 needles for the last week or so, it's just incredibly fast working with the size 13s. I forgot how fast and easy chunky yarns really are!

Vanilla Extract- repost with after pictures and suggestions

At the end of March, I made some vanilla extract. You're supposed to strain the beans and vanilla caviar out after 6 months, I actually let mine go 7. I did use it all the time just pouring carefully after it went about 2 months. It's a dark gorgeous thick vanilla now, but I only have about half a cup left. I'm getting ready to start some more.
So here's the original post.
I got my vanilla beans from Vanilla Products USA extract grade beans. This wound up being about 80 beans from 5 (at the shortest, and only a couple of those) to 7 inch beans. Delivery was fast, I did a buy it now on March 17th and got them today. Communication was good. When I opened the vacuum sealed pouch, I was hit by an intense vanilla/bourbon smell. Yum yum. The beans were thin, but full of a nice dense caviar, and they were moist, out of the ones I rendered for my extract, I only hit one woody bean in the bunch. Bonus- they sent me 10 free Tahitian extract grade beans to try. It was 10.95 + 3.12 first class mail. So about 18¢ per bean, which is a really great price.




So to make my extract, I used the method at Vanilla Review, he's got great instructions and takes vanilla super seriously. So I'm just going to give a quick overview and my math on it.
I *can* use a lot of vanilla, I use lots more than most people I think, since the complexities of underrated vanilla never fail to thrill me. And because vanilla meringues toasted to just golden are as close to a guilt free cookie as you can get. So if you're not as much into vanilla and think less will do fine, just reduce measurements.
So a quick reference for people who don't drink and need measurements (like I did.. so I'm just saving you the google time)
1/2 pint= 8 oz
1 pint= 16 oz
Fifth (the standard bottle size) = 1/5 gallon =25.6 ounces
VR recommends an ounce of beans per cup of liquid, and having 80 beans to 8 ounces roughly (I didn't weigh it) meant approximately 10 beans=1 ounce.
I used Skyy vodka because it was the only mid-tier vodka in a colored bottle. He recommends dark bottles, and in this bottle, I feel safe letting it set until it's ready. I won't put it in sunlight, but in one of my cupboards, it's fine. I got a fifth. Because I needed room for the beans, I poured 3/4 of a cup into a jar to use for something else (footspray actually.. I did mention I don't drink right?)
I wanted a double strength or better vanilla extract. So..
(25.6-6)/8= 2.45, or roughly 2 and half cups of vodka. So for a single strength extract, that would be 25 beans, for my double strength thick extract, it would 50 beans. I sliced off the tops and bottoms of the beans with my sharp knife, and put them in the bottle, then I sliced them lengthwise and used the back of the knife to scrape the caviar out and put the caviar in the bottle, and cut up the pods into inch long pieces and put them in the bottle. And did that for 50 beans, which was time consuming, but if you're making a smaller amount,or just want a single strenth you wouldn't need to do that many. I really like vanilla. When I was done, I recapped the bottle (oh.. a nice easy screw cap!) and gave it a good shake.
In 6 months, I'll strain out the beans, and decant it into smaller amber or green bottles and probably give away a few bottles to friends so my next batch can be made with Alaskan vodka. I'm planning to include a recipe for meringue cookies with it when I give away a couple bottles as gifts. It's supposed to be "done enough" after a month, but I want to let it go the full 6 months for the richness of flavor. A couple weeks before we strain the bean pieces out, we plan to make sugar crystals and then put the pieces in with them for a very fancy sugar for tea and coffee.

Of course, my husband was very patient about the whole house smelling like vanilla. Because he rocks like that.
-----

I strained out the beans into a glass measuring cup using a strainer lined with a coffee filter. I had to shake the bottle quite a bit to get all the beans out, but I did. If you can find a large mouth dark glass jar that might work better, but the shaking time didn't take very long. The cup on the left holds a little bit of coffee the way I brew it. Too dark using dark roasted beans. The one on the right has my vanilla extract in it. So you can see how dark the vanilla extract is. Too bad you can't smell it. It's pretty amazing, my best friend wants some to use as perfume.

Vanilla is expensive. Well, really, from the seller above, it's not very expensive. My husband who works in a large hotel doing a lot of purchasing was pretty surprised how inexpensively I bought my vanilla beans. But still, waste not, want not. I set the beans in a single layer in a glass baking pan and let them dry after straining them out of the extract. Some of them I mixed with a sugar free sweetener for my uncle. The flavor infuses the sweetener and adds a nice touch of vanilla to his tea, coffee and baking. Some went in my daughter's vanilla sugar jar. But I still had a lot left. So I tried grind a couple of the dried used vanilla beans  into my coffee beans then brewing the pot normally. It turned out fantastic. The coffee has a nice vanilla flavor that tastes natural instead of having the chemical flavoring that some vanilla flavored coffee and so far all vanilla flavored creamer I've tried have. It's yummy.

Time to get more vodka, but two bottles this time since I have an idea now how much vanilla I can use in 7 months. That way I'll have more to gift.

Star and Moon Gift Box

Another one of the first boxes I made was a star and moon design for my very good friend Melissa who loves all things celestial. I re-drew the original when I re-drew a whole bunch of my original boxes a couple years ago. You can find that here. The original is just a regular gift box. I was doing a lot with digital stained glass effects at that point until I finally found a method for doing it that I was really happy with.

The template I made for this version is the same one I used for the pink dotty argyle box that I made for putting soap balls in as a gift. It's one of my favorites of the templates I made this year. The lid is very fitted, and scoring and pre-folding are absolutely essential to get this one to turn out right. This one uses a flower as the star which was inspired by a pair of vintage costume earrings I have.

Click on the images for the full sized versions. It takes 2 sheets of cardstock. Print both images at 100 dpi.

 

Thank you and a sword design card box

When I first put up a printables page, it was in my mother's memory. She always encouraged me to make the most of my artistic skills and it was the sort of thing she would have loved. My children at the time were 7 and 2 and I designed some of my original printables with them in mind. Now they are 18 and 14 (their birthdays are 7 months apart if the math seems off.)
I never expected to see my printables page become more popular than my beadwork pages, it still surprises me that people like my boxes. Back then, most of the pages offered very cute clip art on boxes or were Victorian themed. My designs didn't really fit any category easily and even from the beginning I wanted to use my own art.
Thank you all for the support. To people who have just discovered my boxes to the people who have been following from the beginning. The comments and emails through the years have been heartwarming and encouraging. I tend to be very self-conscious and shy about showing off things I make, the last 11 years have helped out a lot with that and I've made some wonderful friends over that time. Thank you all so much. 
My son was into fantasy. A love of his that never quit. Harry Potter, Tolkien, his favorite books, games, movies and activities follow that love of fantasy. So one of the very first boxes I ever posted was a sword design.
Over the next couple of days I'll be using themes from those original boxes and making new boxes and posting them here. This first one is a template I made a couple years ago for my children's trading card games since both of them have lots more cards than they have boxes. It was supposed to be a stop gap until we picked up new boxes for them, but both of them loved their boxes so much they covered them with clear packing tape and still use them for the decks they play most. This one has a sword on it that's similar in a lot of ways to the original box I posted over a decade ago.
100 ppi, click on image for the full sized version.