Homemade Vanilla

The resident child (hehe) has been studying a bit about herbs of late. And it has been on our plans to make homemade vanilla extract for quite some time.

Obviously, not something he can do on his own... He can cut the beans, he can drain the extra fluid, he can drop in the beans, label it all and seal it up, he can store it.

But I had to make purchase. My first alcohol purchase of my life! The things we do for our children! It does seem ironic I just purchased an alcohol for my son, though!

(for the record, I am not opposed to alcohol, I just don't tout it or drink very much, and I have not had a reason to purchase it before now.... wait.... when I lived in Belgium, I bought some wine to bring home to family, but that was a different culture - alcohol was out with the sodas!).

Grandma was given this kind of rum/vanilla; and we were so happy to find it stocked at Kroger. It has fantastic flavor, so we are excited!

The beans we purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs:

http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/search/search.php?refine=y&keywords=vanilla&x=0&y=0

We have the "1oz Vanilla Bean organic and fair trade" and it smells right! ;) I do wonder if we got quite the driest beans (apparently you are supposed to use grade B beans - but I also wanted fair trade, etc). These seemed more most than I anticipated. So we'll see. Either way, it will work from what all sources say - it's just a nuance ;)

He has been looking at the history of the use of vanilla - and true to Montessori style, we want to look at the PEOPLE involved. Most fascinating is that a 12 year old child worked out how to hand-pollinate the vanilla so that it could be grown outside of the Latin America countries.

Forget gold and corn and other such things - the greatest gift that the Europeans found in the Americas: VANILLA!

Ever had chocolate without it?

We did! Never again, thank you!

Vanilla brought chocolate to the impoverished Europeans! And now they make the best chocolate in the world. One plant changed the world! One little boy's discovery!

Drying Mint

We are trying to be good stewards of the earth, while not letting the earth get in the way of the most important gift of human beings: relationship.

It is even better when the two are the same thing :)

In this case, we are growing mint in our living room. As it grows long, we trim it, hang it to dry, grind it up and make tea... and more... While it is drying (upside down so the oils flow back into the leaves, maximizing their potential), we have a beautiful decoration that makes our home, truly homey. Comforting. And there is a natural inclination towards being with one another in a cozy, homey home ;)

Once it is fully dried, we spend time together pulling the leaves off into a large bowl (easier to collect everything then, transfer in small quantities to the mortar and pestle). I bought a set of 3 of these on Amazon years back (affiliate link there) that have been simply fantastic!

The mint leaves are stored in a jar to use for making tea, or to add to our homemade toothpaste or anywhere else we need some mint flavoring.

That leaves the stems - which are fine for adding to the composting, but well, we have an interesting set up with our apartment management and mouse-traps get pricey when management does little to alleviate the issue. But fresh mint keeps them away.

My mother will cringe when she reads that I tuck these stems in all the places where the mice have been spotted. Despite her cringing, I can confidently report success (so far!) - ice-free and my home smells so nice! We freshen them up when we harvest new mint and THEN we compost the stems. There may be other purposes for them, but that is what we do for now :)

mint, dried, laying on the stove because our counters were full at the time.

grinding mint leaves with mortar and pestle

Elementary Biology Album - Now Available

Elementary biology album - AMI style - for ages 6-12 is now available from Keys of the Universe.

The AMI-style Biology Montessori album includes all key presentations for ages 6-12, as well as the Second Great Lesson on the Story of the Coming of Life, introduction to cosmic education, a full materials-needed list, suggested resources for follow-ups, information on demonstrations and experiments from the AMI Geography album, as well as diagrams and illustrations.

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Now available at Garden of Francis and Keys of the World - printed and/or download.

Both album access and online support available at Keys of the Universe Course Access Site.

Additional materials available soon at Garden of Francis.