Oooooh, coconut milk yogurt sounds fab!

I filled 12 4oz quilted crystal jelly jars perfectly. They were just too cute. We topped it with granola when we were ready to enjoy it.

Yogurt incubates between 85-100 degrees, so if you have a warm day, you can skip the water bath and set it outside.

The three other winners of 5 bourbon vanilla beans: Lisa, Michelle and Wendy

Email me at: sovanillabeans @ gmail.com

Congrats everyone! My kids drew the names. I thought this was loads of fun, so I’ll probably bug Rebecca to do it again sometime. I especially loved seeing what everybody learned. It must be the teacher in me. 🙂

Re: the Vanilla Orchid. I once asked a botanist if I could grow vanilla orchids from the seeds. They said yes, but I’d basically need to create sterile laboratory conditions! Crazy. Here is another fact. Vanilla is indigenous to Mexico, it was spread by people w/cuttings everywhere else. But, the only way vanilla is pollinated in the wild is by a specific bee and hummingbird indigenous to the original area. For a while they could grow healthy plants everywhere else but no fruit! That was until a slave boy figured out how to pollinate the flowers by hand. Today even, every vanilla bean that is ever produced from any area other than Mexico was pollinated by a human being. Interesting, huh?

Yep, can’t keep the beans cold. They really will form this white mold on them, (it’s penicillin, actually and I’ve had this happen to me!). So, if you don’t want your beans to go from culinary to medicinal keep them room temp. Keeping them airtight prevents them from drying out. You can still use them when their crunchy-dry…but they’re not as easy to manipulate.

🙂

1.) Blue Heron
2.) vanilla caviar
3.) I had no idea that vanilla beans grew in the shade 20 degrees from the equator…really I didn’t know much about vanilla until I saw your website…adding it to my favorites 🙂