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Hello everyone!

After reading the site a bit more about how vacuum sealed vanilla beans can last years, and having about a pound total of beans in the pantry enclosed in four layers of plastic bags, I decided to put an old vacuum packer my mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago to use and I vacuum packed all my spare vanilla beans last night! I put all the Madagascar beans (they are gourmet grade A bourbon beans) into packages of 12 and I ended up with 11 packs. The Tahitian Grade B was split into two groups of about 60 and packed for future use in half-gallon containers of vodka.

I will be giving vanilla, as extract, sugar, and beans for Christmas this year, so I will be sending the beans out vacuum packed (with my own sticker-label on them) along with a plastic container of the vanilla sugar and a glass bottle of extract. My wife will be compiling recipes to make a cookbook that has recipes containing vanilla to send along with the vanilla this year as well. The best part of this all; total cost for gifts for about 10 people will be around $100 total. What's sweet about that is not only is it a way for me to do Christmas on the cheap, but it's something that will save the recipients of the gift a lot of money, as real vanilla extract and vanilla beans are expensive when sold at retail in smal amounts. The gift will be perceived as one having cost a whole lot more than it did (not that cost matters in a gift, but no-one likes receiving something they know was only given because it's cheap).

I can't wait for early November to arrive so that I can start sending these gifts out early. My idea is to send out the vanilla early so that everyone can bake good Christmas goodies and give some to me. lol.