Homemade Vanilla

       Two of my proposed food gifts both take more time than effort.  And by time I mean time sitting and developing flavor time not labor time.
     This weekend I started a quart of homemade vanilla.  This was actually a little late to start on it as vanilla should sit for at least two months prior to using.  It only takes two ingredients:  vanilla beans and vodka.  I read lots off different homemade vanilla recipes on the web.  Some of the sites I read were:  http://hitchhikingtoheaven.com/2011/10/homemade-vanilla-extract-day-one.html , http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/making-homemade-vanilla-extract-aka-why-laura-bought-a-gallon-of-vodka , http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2010/09/17/homemade-gift-series-1-vanilla-extract/, and http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_vanilla_extract/ .  There are a lot of others too!  Am I the last person to try this?  This is why I love the web - you have an idea or a need and almost always there is something online to help.
       The problem is that each site has a slightly different recipe. I ended up taking the middle road as far as ratio of beans to vodka.  I used two kinds of beans:  Tahitian and Planifolia.  I ordered these online last week and a total of a half a pound was under $30.00.  A half a pound is a lot of beans!!
          The steps are easy.  Slice almost to the top of each vanilla bean.

        Put them in a clean canning jar, fill with vodka and cover with a lid.

       Pint jars were already on hand so I used those and smooshed (technical term) the beans down to fit.
I put four of each type of bean in each jar for a total of eight per pint. After a few minutes the vodka was already starting to darken.

  Just store in a dark cool space for two months, give an occasional shake and voila! vanilla.  It took maybe 5 minutes to do this.  Bonus - my kitchen smelled like vanilla for the rest of the weekend.  Right before Christmas I'll pour it into four ounce bottles and give as gifts to my co-workers.
    I also started homemade limoncello last week but will wait to talk more about that til after the second step next weekend.

Pear Vanilla Jam

          Another project this weekend was to make pear vanilla jam from the recipe on foodinjars.com.  I've made a few of her recipes since the summer and I'm trying to get a small stockpile so I can use some jars for holiday gifts.  However, what I've made so far is so good that our jam consumption has greatly increased.
          What I love about the foodinjars site aside from the great tasting recipes is that the recipes are for small batches.  Most can be completed start to finish in less than 2 hours and can be accomplished without any pricey equipment (although I do have a pressure cooker on my amazon wish list).
           This recipe appealed to me because it uses real vanilla beans.  Yum.  To make it you chop up pears, scrape out the insides of two vanilla beans, and put it all in a non-reactive pot with lots of sugar.  That is it.  The only other ingredient is pectin.  It looked like this as the sugar started dissolving.  See the clumps of vanilla paste.

        After it cooks down til the pears are tender, take out the empty pods and mash up most of the pears with either a masher or an immersion blender.

   The black specks around the edges are vanilla.  I kept trying to scrape them back in but couldn't get all of them.  I scooped the jam out into jars, processed them for 10 minutes and only an hour and a half after starting had 3 pints (1 big and 4 little) jars of pear vanilla jam.  Please go to foodinjars.com for the recipe.

      But, the critical takeaway here is that canning doesn't have to be complicated or scary.  With just a little time and regular cooking equipment (aside from the jars) you can preserve fruit easily.