There's a Reason...

...that Ms. Izzy is so happy to have a KitchenAid stand mixer:


With the bowl:


and freshly made bread:


I boo-booed on the bread. It was supposed to be whole wheat, but when I started making it, I immediately measured out mostly white flour and only about a third was whole wheat. I bet it tastes good. We'll find out when it cools.

Vanilla Update

Here we go, three weeks into the making of vanilla. It's pretty dark and is beginning to smell really yummy. When I think about it, I take the bottle out of the cabinet and shake it up. I guess I'll leave it in there to age for about 3 months. My kitchen was dark when I took the first picture, so I set the bottle in the window for the other one.





According to a friend at work who makes vanilla and shares with her Mom, 15 beans are better than 10 in a fifth. She gets her beans from...where else...Penzey's spices! I'm hoping mine will come out strong enough with only 10. The more beans, the stronger the vanilla. She also said that some people use Rum, but she doesn't like rum/vanilla flavor so she uses Vodka. She wants hers as strongly vanilla as possible. My beans said Rodelle Vanilla Beans on the package.

A Quilt for Mama-Lady

You all know that I picked Mom for Christmas this year, so here is the gift I gave. I'm going to go to her house someday and have two people hold this up so you can see the whole thing. Sometimes when I'm quilting, my ideas get away from me...

Making Vanilla

The day my eye blew up, I was in Albuquerque where I went to Costco and found they had a package of 10 vanilla beans. I purchased those and then went to our Smith's store and bought a cheap bottle of (on sale!) Vodka. I proceeded to make vanilla:

1. Pour out about a cup of the Vodka to make room in the bottle before you start stuffing the bans in:



2. Cut the vanilla beans allong the length and open them up:



3. I cut all ten beans and stuck them in the bottle:



4. Pour the extra Vodka back in the bottle to cover the beans and dump the left over. Et Voila! Vanilla! Or it will be in about 4 months. I've checked it a couple of times and it's starting to smell really goooood!

I'M NOT DRIVING THAT CAR!

As P-doobie said in her blog, we took pictures of each other through the car window. I was trying to be Jack Classic and look at the scenery without getting out.

We were leaving Bandelier when we saw this small herd of deer:


This one was noshing on the scenery: