It's been a busy week!
I got the lasagne beds planted in since my last post. Rich sweetness melon, burpless cukes, and violetta pole beans are in bed one. I used three tomato towers to run them up. Started out with pinning with tent stakes, then sunk in 6 boot bamboo poles real deep around the cages to help keep them secure. I also utilized the outside of the rings instead of the topheavy tomato in the center. So I hope this works better.
Bed two has a hill of yellow straightneck and a hill of those heirloom Italian round zukes- the latter I'm planning on using for seed saving to the best that I can before the squash beetles move in.
In bed three is a whole bed of toothache plant- I hadn't planned on using bed three this summer, but it was ready to go, and the bed I was planning on using wasn't ready yet.
And in the backs, fronts, and corners of the three beds in it's set are borage, fennel, lemon balm, lemon bee balm, calendula, and a couple kinds of zinnias.
I also heavily mulched in all the paths and the mowing surround deeply in cardboard topped with straw flakes. Yes, I usually do lasagne with straw in the bed. But this year is going to be a build up year in the beds, and as the straw levels and stuff gets pulled, I will be backfilling in with compost and such.
We are having some lovely iris blooming in the yard too. Moons white iris was spectacular, and it has faded out just as her blue iris has come into bloom. A few of my "specials" have bloomed well behind the solarium too. Thank goodness I've had the mind to keep a tag of everything in one binder so I can Id these guys and prep up space to move them out elsewhere in the yard that is sunnier for them. I think some of them might end up in the first section of the front yard bed. It looks frightfully bare between the daffodil spring flush, hibiscus start to grow in, and mums fall flush.
Got a HUGE amount of shopping done. Ground chuck was 1.99 a pound in the family packs, I picked up 12 pounds. That will bust down into several meals over the next few months. Butter was finally down to 2/5 again, so I picked up 10 pounds. That will last us into the fall. Stocked up on shelf stable condiments- it's sandwich and salad season, so it's good to buy cheap now.
Hit Menards for some random stuff, the resale shop for some new work clothes- found a pair of adventure pants for two bucks! Bought a pair of shoes on clearance for 10 bucks. I seriously needed a second set since my shoes get so wet with watering all the time, and I need to switch off pairs to allow for good drying time. Need to bring dry socks to work too. Thinking about buying a pair of cheap kids crocks to wear in the morning while I'm watering.
Hit Meijer, then Village Market, then Hardings, then Rite Aid. Yeah, this sounds like a lot of chasing around. But really I only used a gallon or two of gas, took some time to myself in comfortable indoors to shop.. and saved almost 200 dollars. And now the house is restocked on some much depleted things for a long time.
Otherwise a lot of going to work. Damn, I'm kind of hurting, like prescription meds hurting. Wouldn't be so much if I wasn't also busting a gut on my days off. But on the bright side, I'm acclamating to the extra physical work, and I'm getting fitter.
And I'm reaping in some great gardening benefits. I was asked to clear out some barrels of last years tulips and daffodils. One guy wanted the tulips. No one wanted the daffodils. So for free, I was able to take home a couple bags of daffodils. And over the last week I rack dried them and now they are finishing curing off. These will be going into heavily seeding in flowers at my mums house later this year. And I was able to take a few pots and pot flats home of the bigger stuff we've been planting in for display. For free. They were going to be throwing them away, just like the daffodil bulbs I cleaned out of the barrels.
And I get total first pick of anything coming off the truck. All of our trucks show up when I'm at work, and either I'm helping doing the unloading, or working the clipboard for heavy unloading.
And ooohhhh,.... while out and about the other day, was able to pick up a couple waterbed pedestals for free! We now have a whole new dresser under our bed. Super awesome. Kind of wishing for a whole new mattress now that the boxspring is gone.
In super sad news... last Labor Day weekend I wrote... When summer broke, so did he, and when it broke again, so did he. Argent.
I think we are going to be living through that again this summer. This time Pookums. He's been taking an elderly downturn for a while now.. but more recently, with the weather breaking... so is he.
So now is the time we get to start preparing his grave. Choosing flowers to plant over and such. It's also high time to plant in Argents bed of lillys.
And ending on some food upswing. Hubby is making mac and cheese with ham and mixed veggies for dinner tonight.
Welcome to Growbox Hill
Welcome to Growbox HIll!
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Too dang busy to write..
And I have been too busy to write for a while now....
First it was the old job completely screwing up all of my time and my sanity. I quit that job, and within two weeks, I was offered a full time job at a local nursery! Which is wonderful, I love working with the plants and stuff... but it leaves me on mighty slim time to get everything else done that needs to be done.
I've been fortunate that a garden fairy has been cleaning out the beds for me, mysteriously leaving guardian chickens behind everywhere.
But we have had some nasty late season weather that has been putting hiccups into the works.
So now there's new herbs in the herb garden, along with a lovely swath of inpatients. The stair garden is now chock full of ornamental kale, spring kale, blue vates kale, rainbow chard, broccoli, and spectacular ornamental head kales and cabbages, ringed around with marigolds.
The kennel garden is now planted in with brussels sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, tatsoi, bok choi, chinese cabbage, garlic, radishes, carrots, and beets. And containers have been set up with yard long beans and turkey craw drying beans.
Spring cleanup has been a PITA, we shed a lot of tree bits over the winter. That's mostly cleaned up into piles now, but they haven't been moved to the pit yet- too wet down there.
Pooks, my oldest cat, is getting very old- I fear we will be losing him sometime this summer.
Within two weeks of quitting that wretched job, I was also tapped to run in this fall elections for a trustee position- of parks- in my local township. So what little spare time I might have, I need to learn all that jazz. But thankfully, the full time summer job at the nursery will die back by November, so that at least will work out a bit easier. Hopefully.
I still need to get out and bust up some garden beds- I haven't even started getting stuff together to do plant sales coming up.. part of that is due to some serious winter losses with seed starting, and a lot of re-alloting plants off to other people.
All in all... just busy as hell.
First it was the old job completely screwing up all of my time and my sanity. I quit that job, and within two weeks, I was offered a full time job at a local nursery! Which is wonderful, I love working with the plants and stuff... but it leaves me on mighty slim time to get everything else done that needs to be done.
I've been fortunate that a garden fairy has been cleaning out the beds for me, mysteriously leaving guardian chickens behind everywhere.
But we have had some nasty late season weather that has been putting hiccups into the works.
So now there's new herbs in the herb garden, along with a lovely swath of inpatients. The stair garden is now chock full of ornamental kale, spring kale, blue vates kale, rainbow chard, broccoli, and spectacular ornamental head kales and cabbages, ringed around with marigolds.
The kennel garden is now planted in with brussels sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, tatsoi, bok choi, chinese cabbage, garlic, radishes, carrots, and beets. And containers have been set up with yard long beans and turkey craw drying beans.
Spring cleanup has been a PITA, we shed a lot of tree bits over the winter. That's mostly cleaned up into piles now, but they haven't been moved to the pit yet- too wet down there.
Pooks, my oldest cat, is getting very old- I fear we will be losing him sometime this summer.
Within two weeks of quitting that wretched job, I was also tapped to run in this fall elections for a trustee position- of parks- in my local township. So what little spare time I might have, I need to learn all that jazz. But thankfully, the full time summer job at the nursery will die back by November, so that at least will work out a bit easier. Hopefully.
I still need to get out and bust up some garden beds- I haven't even started getting stuff together to do plant sales coming up.. part of that is due to some serious winter losses with seed starting, and a lot of re-alloting plants off to other people.
All in all... just busy as hell.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Happy spring! Garlic.. and what? mmmm.
Under a winter weather advisory, been starting to snow like a mo for about an hour now.. and welcome to spring!
Sure, seems early and cold.. but March, April, and May are traditional spring months around here. Wasn't going to be shoveling today outside... so today was the freezer cleanout day. The kitchen freezer was empty enough finally that I could really scrub it down and start refilling it out of the chest freezer. Then it was empty out the chest freezer to let that defrost properly before refilling it again. Currently we have a laundry hamper of frozen food and a couple whole turkeys out on the front porch getting buried with snow. And this folks, is why you clean out your freezer in the winter :) You got a whole chest freezer outside, use it.
We have also pulled almost all of the fruit out of the bottom of the freezer- bags of whole strawberries and necterane slices, and cherries in simple syrup. We also have wild blackberries, gooseberries, and a wee bit of sugared strawberry slices too. A lone bag of sweet potato pulp and a bag of mixed winter squashes pulp to make into squash ravioli with a couple bags of won ton skins that need to be eaten up.
Tonights dinner is a treat usually reserved for summer- Southern style squash casserole. It's full of butter, cream soup, and sour cream, layered in with thick slabs of summer squash and top and bottom is crusted in with buttery crispy bread goodness :)
Pulled out a bunch of random meat bits and a lot of random cheese to the upfront freezer. We have and use a lot of cheese, heh.
Used up the last of the melon pulps in fruit-waters, yum! The watermelon was really good, will do it again for sure. But the cantaloupe, while good, was not awesome. I would rather stock twice as much of the watermelon.
Also made a batch of blueberry simple syrup today, yum. Maybe more of a shrub than a simple syrup, I'm also using dehydrated lemon slices and homemade vanilla sugar as a finishing sugar.
And today I roasted off a large quantity of homegrown garlic. yum. Who loves roasted garlic? This girl does :) And this is the second batch recently, teehee. I did up a lil brown crock of it the other day, and used it up to bake off a large loaf of roasted garlic Italian bread, yum. This batch uses up the last of the "roasting stage" garlic. I went through all my sacks of garlic we still have so far. We eat a lot of garlic! I set up another pot of garlic shoots with all the seriously crappy heads that didn't make it through winter storage so far. The first one I've already trimmed a couple inches off the top of, and it already needs another goodly pruning! Very gratifying and frigging fast growing instant awesomeness for this time of year.
Anywho, gratifying greenery... I have a dining room window full of plant goodness, and more sprawled across the house.
Snort, thought I published this already, apparently not... First of spring was yesterday, time has slipped on me.
Well anywho, in the last three weeks since that bit above.. lots of seeding and reseeding. Peppers and another set of peppers, tomatoes and another set of tomatoes. Bunch of herbs and some flowers. Broccoli and cauliflower. Already got the first greenhouse set up outside and it currently has lettuce, brussels sprouts and hellebores in it. Thyme and rosemary plants are now out on the porch too, though if we get freeze warnings in I will still pull them inside or put them in the greenhouse. I can tell it got too nippy one night already since the tyme plants have some purplish blush on some leaves, showing frost damage.
Crocuses, siberian irises, and some of the early daffodils are blooming, yay!!
Been shaking up the menu around here. Using up the larder. Creating some new recipes. I think I might have enough of a stack or recipes by now that I need to start considering my cookbook again, and filling in segments of it.
Spring peepers have been out for a it over a week now, and the swans are on the pond and nesting. I need to pick up birdseed to start refilling the feeders again.
I trimmed out that crappy area on the fenceline where the weed trees grow- I hope I did it early enough and used enough spraypaint on the cuts to make a difference. This is a battle I'm tired of. I also trimmed the apple trees, one rather heavily. We will see if I did it too late in the winter or not, but I think I'm good.
The solarium has stayed above freezing for most of the winter, which is good. It has had some time in that fridge zone of 35-45, which is not good. Not bad necessarily, but I would like to improve on that if I can. It has stabilized warm enough that I can use it for some of the heartier seedlings, yay! Which is good, because all of them are needing potting up, and I don't have room in the kitchen, heh. The grand shuffle of plants is on.
But I gotta bail off, need to get ready for work. And yeah, publish this right now before time slips again, lol.
Sure, seems early and cold.. but March, April, and May are traditional spring months around here. Wasn't going to be shoveling today outside... so today was the freezer cleanout day. The kitchen freezer was empty enough finally that I could really scrub it down and start refilling it out of the chest freezer. Then it was empty out the chest freezer to let that defrost properly before refilling it again. Currently we have a laundry hamper of frozen food and a couple whole turkeys out on the front porch getting buried with snow. And this folks, is why you clean out your freezer in the winter :) You got a whole chest freezer outside, use it.
We have also pulled almost all of the fruit out of the bottom of the freezer- bags of whole strawberries and necterane slices, and cherries in simple syrup. We also have wild blackberries, gooseberries, and a wee bit of sugared strawberry slices too. A lone bag of sweet potato pulp and a bag of mixed winter squashes pulp to make into squash ravioli with a couple bags of won ton skins that need to be eaten up.
Tonights dinner is a treat usually reserved for summer- Southern style squash casserole. It's full of butter, cream soup, and sour cream, layered in with thick slabs of summer squash and top and bottom is crusted in with buttery crispy bread goodness :)
Pulled out a bunch of random meat bits and a lot of random cheese to the upfront freezer. We have and use a lot of cheese, heh.
Used up the last of the melon pulps in fruit-waters, yum! The watermelon was really good, will do it again for sure. But the cantaloupe, while good, was not awesome. I would rather stock twice as much of the watermelon.
Also made a batch of blueberry simple syrup today, yum. Maybe more of a shrub than a simple syrup, I'm also using dehydrated lemon slices and homemade vanilla sugar as a finishing sugar.
And today I roasted off a large quantity of homegrown garlic. yum. Who loves roasted garlic? This girl does :) And this is the second batch recently, teehee. I did up a lil brown crock of it the other day, and used it up to bake off a large loaf of roasted garlic Italian bread, yum. This batch uses up the last of the "roasting stage" garlic. I went through all my sacks of garlic we still have so far. We eat a lot of garlic! I set up another pot of garlic shoots with all the seriously crappy heads that didn't make it through winter storage so far. The first one I've already trimmed a couple inches off the top of, and it already needs another goodly pruning! Very gratifying and frigging fast growing instant awesomeness for this time of year.
Anywho, gratifying greenery... I have a dining room window full of plant goodness, and more sprawled across the house.
Snort, thought I published this already, apparently not... First of spring was yesterday, time has slipped on me.
Well anywho, in the last three weeks since that bit above.. lots of seeding and reseeding. Peppers and another set of peppers, tomatoes and another set of tomatoes. Bunch of herbs and some flowers. Broccoli and cauliflower. Already got the first greenhouse set up outside and it currently has lettuce, brussels sprouts and hellebores in it. Thyme and rosemary plants are now out on the porch too, though if we get freeze warnings in I will still pull them inside or put them in the greenhouse. I can tell it got too nippy one night already since the tyme plants have some purplish blush on some leaves, showing frost damage.
Crocuses, siberian irises, and some of the early daffodils are blooming, yay!!
Been shaking up the menu around here. Using up the larder. Creating some new recipes. I think I might have enough of a stack or recipes by now that I need to start considering my cookbook again, and filling in segments of it.
Spring peepers have been out for a it over a week now, and the swans are on the pond and nesting. I need to pick up birdseed to start refilling the feeders again.
I trimmed out that crappy area on the fenceline where the weed trees grow- I hope I did it early enough and used enough spraypaint on the cuts to make a difference. This is a battle I'm tired of. I also trimmed the apple trees, one rather heavily. We will see if I did it too late in the winter or not, but I think I'm good.
The solarium has stayed above freezing for most of the winter, which is good. It has had some time in that fridge zone of 35-45, which is not good. Not bad necessarily, but I would like to improve on that if I can. It has stabilized warm enough that I can use it for some of the heartier seedlings, yay! Which is good, because all of them are needing potting up, and I don't have room in the kitchen, heh. The grand shuffle of plants is on.
But I gotta bail off, need to get ready for work. And yeah, publish this right now before time slips again, lol.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
changing of seasons..
We went from true on cold as hell and got snow winter like we are supposed to last Saturday to full on early spring warm and lovely over yesterday and today. And dipping down in the next few days with snow storms likely
Been doing a lot of spring cleaning.. more like late winter getting ready for spring cleaning. Some rearranging of the furniture, tossing out stuff from the solarium to the garage or the curb. The solarium has gotten some attention, so I can start using the place more properly for potting and crafting again. It just gets too darn cold in winter, then stuff piles up... sheesh.
Anywho. In the gardening front... Some more major changes going on, heh. My brother and I got to talking the other day, and he wants a white chili veggie garden. He had no idea I ran a white year last year for tomatoes, hehe. I'm glad I did, so now I know which ones are the tastiest and best for chili. So I'm pulling a few other tomato plans of the list so I can grow white tomatoes. I have no white peppers, so I had to order some up real quick from Baker Creek. Three sweets and a white Hab. Now I'm changing pepper plans too, and pulling some off the list to just put into the sales pile. Like Sweet Banana and Hungarian Yellow Wax- those I can buy cheap and in plenty during the season locally.
Some of the beds are moving around more too. Not physically of course. But the time is long overdue for me to do some serious rotating, replenishing, and general attendance to all the beds. I'm learning a lot of things about all of this action. The different groupings and scheduling of rotation, what companion plants are what, what plants are for what bugs. I want to grow a bug patch this year, something to attract in beneficials and the baddies, hopefully get some bug control going on.
At the end I know at least a raised bed or two will be getting dedicated to the white chili garden. Still planning on going ahead with the black tomatoes- fewer of them, but still.
The lasagna beds- some of that space is being dedicated to growing Brussels Sprouts. Probably some broccoli and cauliflower too. But a lot of turning over and attending to kind of cleaning up and finalizing the borders more. We got the base layer materials built up nicely now.
I need to keep up on the beds down front- and I still want to add on another section to what I planted last year. I'm just not sure if I want to try to mimic the first section, or do something different.
The herb border on the fence needs a total overhaul I think. Serious amounts of work.
And want to keep up with keeping the pole barn bed cleaned up.
The kennel beds are getting the most overhaul. The garlic bed went in last fall, and the other leg of the L is getting cleaned out and the line of it straightened out before anything else. I'm thinking of doing a lot of container growing on the slab, but I'm unsure of just what I want to do there yet.
The FOH garden and kitchen garden will likely see more attention this year. The mint hill will also see some cleanup- last year was an establishment year, this year I'm hoping to train that into a fill in year. The solariam surround just needs a little cleaning up I think- I gotta remember to pull some irises for the bead lady.
I'm thinking there might not be any real squash this year- I want to combat squash beetle. So melons, gourds, cukes are all out too. I might plant in some for trapping action, but I won't be anticipating any real fruiting off them.
Been doing a lot of spring cleaning.. more like late winter getting ready for spring cleaning. Some rearranging of the furniture, tossing out stuff from the solarium to the garage or the curb. The solarium has gotten some attention, so I can start using the place more properly for potting and crafting again. It just gets too darn cold in winter, then stuff piles up... sheesh.
Anywho. In the gardening front... Some more major changes going on, heh. My brother and I got to talking the other day, and he wants a white chili veggie garden. He had no idea I ran a white year last year for tomatoes, hehe. I'm glad I did, so now I know which ones are the tastiest and best for chili. So I'm pulling a few other tomato plans of the list so I can grow white tomatoes. I have no white peppers, so I had to order some up real quick from Baker Creek. Three sweets and a white Hab. Now I'm changing pepper plans too, and pulling some off the list to just put into the sales pile. Like Sweet Banana and Hungarian Yellow Wax- those I can buy cheap and in plenty during the season locally.
Some of the beds are moving around more too. Not physically of course. But the time is long overdue for me to do some serious rotating, replenishing, and general attendance to all the beds. I'm learning a lot of things about all of this action. The different groupings and scheduling of rotation, what companion plants are what, what plants are for what bugs. I want to grow a bug patch this year, something to attract in beneficials and the baddies, hopefully get some bug control going on.
At the end I know at least a raised bed or two will be getting dedicated to the white chili garden. Still planning on going ahead with the black tomatoes- fewer of them, but still.
The lasagna beds- some of that space is being dedicated to growing Brussels Sprouts. Probably some broccoli and cauliflower too. But a lot of turning over and attending to kind of cleaning up and finalizing the borders more. We got the base layer materials built up nicely now.
I need to keep up on the beds down front- and I still want to add on another section to what I planted last year. I'm just not sure if I want to try to mimic the first section, or do something different.
The herb border on the fence needs a total overhaul I think. Serious amounts of work.
And want to keep up with keeping the pole barn bed cleaned up.
The kennel beds are getting the most overhaul. The garlic bed went in last fall, and the other leg of the L is getting cleaned out and the line of it straightened out before anything else. I'm thinking of doing a lot of container growing on the slab, but I'm unsure of just what I want to do there yet.
The FOH garden and kitchen garden will likely see more attention this year. The mint hill will also see some cleanup- last year was an establishment year, this year I'm hoping to train that into a fill in year. The solariam surround just needs a little cleaning up I think- I gotta remember to pull some irises for the bead lady.
I'm thinking there might not be any real squash this year- I want to combat squash beetle. So melons, gourds, cukes are all out too. I might plant in some for trapping action, but I won't be anticipating any real fruiting off them.
And ah yes. That glorious gardening and preserving moment.. When at the end of February, I can fully restock the pantry with two cases of tomato products I put up last year. Another month or two of not having to buy any tomato product in the stores since last summer- priceless :)
Italian stewed tomatoes, crushed white tomatoes, and tomato puree are now out of the canning pantry. Still have the Rotels to pull out when there's more space in the kitchen pantry. And I still have several jars of tomato juice and a couple jars of dehydrated tomatoes so I can whip up more tomato goods as needed. Plus an ice cube tray or two in the freezer of other tomato stuff. Super concentrated pulp and refined juice. And a jar of smoked dehydrated tomatoes in the back of the fridge. I'm starting to think that perhaps I'm getting to around the right amount of preserving required to keep the household happy.
I've been tinkering around with some other preserved food stuff lately too, wanting to eat out the pantries and freezers as much as we can right now. Been keeping notes on it all too, heh. But that will be another post for another day, it's already been far too long since I last posted.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
How I make Vanilla Sugar
So since I have vanilla beans on hand, and just picked up a few 4 pound bags of sugar on sale recently... And since I'm down to a half jar of Vanilla Sugar... I decided it was time to set up some more. Good vanilla sugar takes a while to really cure nicely. For me, it's a goodly couple months before I consider a jar steeped enough to use.
What is vanilla sugar? Why, simply white sugar infused with vanilla beans. What is it good for? All sorts of sweet applications that use vanilla. Like if you make pound cake, cookies, or meringues- use vanilla sugar and vanilla to kick up the vanilla. Works great for homemade ice cream, and is excellent in jellies. Makes a tasty addition to your coffee and several hot teas :)
Onto making it...
This is your whole list of everything you need.
Vanilla Beans and a 4 pound bag of sugar
jars to put the sugar into
a bowl, whisk, and spatula to stir your sugar up
a knife and cutting board to slice your beans on
Mmmmm, I use five beans for this. One bean per pound of sugar, plus one bean for the batch. These are lovely and fresh, very flexable and easy to cut.
After you slice down the bean, use the back of your knife to scrape your bean. Yes, the back of your knife. Works easier this way, trust me.
Mmmmm, lot of beanie goodness just piling up on that blade.
5 beans yield of guts, yum. this gets stirred into the sugar. Yes, the pods and all their remaining clinging goodness are getting used later on.
Now to start the sugar. Use about a third of the bag to start off with, and use all the bean guts.
Before the first whisking. You are going to whisk it it because it will break up the vanilla blobs easier. You use less sugar because it's easier that way too. Once the vanilla is well distributed, add another third of the bag of sugar and whisk that in. Once that is well distributed, use the spatula to stir in the last third of a bag of sugar.
This is the whole bowl of sugar, after stirring. Now to fill the jars :)
The stripped pods, with much goodness clinging to them, yum.
Cut them up into 5-6 segments, you will be distributing them equally among your jars.
Two quart jars, filled about a third of the way full of sugar, ready for the first batch of beans.
Here's about a quarter of the beans in one of the jars. After tossing in your beans, close up the jar and shake well. Open jar up, add another third of sugar and another quarter of the beans, close up the jar and shake well. Add the final third of the sugar to the jar and shake well again.
Keep in mind that you are doing this to two quart jars.
This is what a full jar looks like. Nice distribution of little black flakes, and you can see some of the beans. There will be about a cup of sugar left over. If you really want to pack it into the jars, you can make it fit. I don't bother, I just use a pint jar for the leftover sugar. That sugar will receive my leftover beans from the last batch of vanilla sugar, sort of start a mother. But you want to make sure you use all 5 fresh bean pods between the two quart jars.
Now all you have to do is seal the jars, set them aside in a cool, dark, and dry place.. and in a few months when summer baking and sweet preserving comes in, you will have some sugar ready for use.
And that's how I make vanilla sugar.
What is vanilla sugar? Why, simply white sugar infused with vanilla beans. What is it good for? All sorts of sweet applications that use vanilla. Like if you make pound cake, cookies, or meringues- use vanilla sugar and vanilla to kick up the vanilla. Works great for homemade ice cream, and is excellent in jellies. Makes a tasty addition to your coffee and several hot teas :)
Onto making it...
Vanilla Beans and a 4 pound bag of sugar
jars to put the sugar into
a bowl, whisk, and spatula to stir your sugar up
a knife and cutting board to slice your beans on
This is the whole bowl of sugar, after stirring. Now to fill the jars :)
Keep in mind that you are doing this to two quart jars.
Now all you have to do is seal the jars, set them aside in a cool, dark, and dry place.. and in a few months when summer baking and sweet preserving comes in, you will have some sugar ready for use.
And that's how I make vanilla sugar.
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