yeah, that’s right, you heard me. in a really dorky move, i just spent a few minutes excitedly reading an article on vanilla beans, hanging on each word and blurting out the highlights of the article to brian, who at least did a good job of pretending: a. he was interested and b. i wasn’t the biggest dork in the world.

so if you don’t want to read it, here’s a synopsis of what i learned:

• vanilla comes from an orchid that takes 10 years to mature, has to be fertilized by hand (unless in mexico where one species of bee will do it) and is the second most expensive spice, after saffron
• synthetic vanilla is 100x cheaper than real vanilla
• two studies by cook’s illustrated have shown that pastry chefs and bakers can’t tell the difference between synthetic and real vanilla in the dishes tested
• those specks in the vanilla bean ice cream are actually vanilla beans, but they have no flavor!

i am not sure why i found this article so riveting, but it certainly sucked me in.

also, speaking of ice cream, if you ever run out of hershey’s chocolate syrup here’s a handy substitute. (i have been out for 3 weeks and there has been NONE in the ice cream topping area at the store - what is going on? is hershey’s syrup the next jello-pudding-pop-style casualty of snack food?) i was mocked when i first made this, but turns out brian and shannon actually prefer it to the real thing.

1 tsp hershey’s baking cocoa
1 tsp sugar
dash of salt
1 tsp milk

just mix it up together. it doesn’t seem like enough liquid at first, but keep stirring

i have no idea why i know how to do this. i think i made it up during the summer after 6th grade, when i ate ice cream at 11am every morning while watching the price is right.