19 recipes down, 249 days to go
Does anyone else love the smell of vanilla extract? Every time I use it—which is often—I put my nose right up to the open bottle and take a big sniffing inhale to catch a whiff of this wonderful substance. Vanilla extract and I are on intimate terms.
It might come as a surprise that I was absolutely clueless about their parent: the vanilla bean. I had never seen or used a vanilla bean before.
Or maybe this isn't a surprise if you are familiar yourself and know how much these beans cost! It was 5 dollars for just one! But it was worth it for this...
Tuesday, September 15th
- Maple and Walnut Granola -
This is a vanilla bean (also called vanilla pod)! In the recipe it said to split it lengthwise and scrape the seeds out. 'What seeds?' I thought. It is so tiny and skinny, how could it possibly be storing any seeds? Lo and behold, there were hundreds...
Just not the "seeds" I normally think of... these were tiny black specks! They got all over my fingers when I was scraping them out.
(I'm sorry for the sub-level picture... I had a taste of this stuff hot out of the oven and I completely forget about taking a picture of it on the baking sheet. It wasn't my fault!)
Maple syrup, orange, vanilla seeds, and cinnamon is a match made in heaven. And it smells amazing. It's aroma was so strong I could smell the granola baking from my room upstairs—door closed! It seeped right in through the space in between my door frame...
I had a yogurt and granola bowl for breakfast three consecutive days that week—I couldn't get enough of this! Every piece was coated in the sweet syrup, and each bite had that satisfying crunch that makes granola next level stuff. I had some by the handful—I couldn't stop the munching—it was overpoweringly cravable.
After what happened with the last granola I made from Oh She Glows (see trials and tribulations), I did a full-on hoarding of this one—trying to make it last a reasonable amount of time!
I think this granola might have been even better... if that's possible.