Confessions of A Vanilla Badass...

Sometimes, because I’m a quiet white lady and I only weigh about 108 pounds and a little bit older and I don’t have tattoos or crazy hair and I don’t do drugs and I’m nice and I enjoy giving out homemade dog treats to the local pups…

Sometimes, people see me as a “pushover”.  The sort of delicate flower you can step all over and they’ll just sit quietly in a corner of the garden and “take it”.

But I’m actually kind of a secret badass.  Maybe because I went to Catholic schools.  Two things you learn there---when you’re forced to wear uniforms, you’re forced to develop a PERSONALITY to distinguish yourself from the others.  And second---nuns may look all sweet and gentle…  But DO NOT mess with a nun.  

I repeat---DO NOT MESS WITH A NUN!!!
  

There's a mistaken belief that you need to “look dangerous” and “talk tough" to be a badass.  But the worst kind of badass you can encounter is a Vanilla Badass---someone like me---because you'll never see it coming.

My mother is a Vanilla Badass.  Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't swear. Never has and never will.  You do NOT want to run into her in the dark alley of your life.

Because don't even THINK of taking advantage of my mother.  I've seen her do battle with every kind of "bad guy" imaginable.  She always wins.  After she's dispatched her latest assailant, she goes home to enjoy a cup of tea with rye bread and butter to watch the nightly news while her victim curls up like a partially-aborted fetus and whimpers under his mommy's bed.

Being a Vanilla Badass has NOTHING to do with skin color and EVERYTHING to do with your attitude towards life, your fellow man, and the world around you. 

Gentle, but with an inner strength.  An Iron Butterfly.

Last week, my friend Jana was in town from Bali where she works as a healer.  As we chatted over tea and coffee and a delicious lunch in the East Village---I learned SO much about Bali. 

Pros:  It’s BALI!!!  Beautiful weather, fresh fruits and vegetables, lots of yoga and relaxation.  Ah! 

Cons:  Bugs.  Huge ass bugs.  And lizards and snakes and lots of other creepy-crawly things…none of which seem to have any trouble getting into your home.

As I squirmed in my seat, Jana shrugged it off and explained, “After all, it IS the jungle.”

That's SO badass!!!  

It would take a LOT of yoga for me to be all namaste about that.

But she gave me two little gifts from Bali that thrilled me to no end---cocoa butter and Balinese vanilla beans!  Two products not only inexpensive in Bali, but perfected there.

One of the things Jana mentioned over lunch, “It’s weird, I can buy vanilla beans and vanilla bean paste and powdered vanilla….but I can’t find vanilla extract anywhere in Bali.”

It wasn’t till I was I was back home that it dawned on me.  I remembered something else she’d mentioned over lunch so I sent her an email.

“I have a feeling that the reason you can’t find vanilla extract in Bali is because it contains alcohol.  But I’ve made it at home and it’s easy! I’ll send you the recipe.”

What she had mentioned was that while Bali is fairly autonomous from the rest of Indonesia due to both its reliance on tourism and the fact that it’s always been less of a Muslim culture than a Hindu/Buddhist/animism culture steeped in thousands of years of ritual---it’s still technically a Muslim country and alcohol is…well, not exactly forbidden, but… 

You CAN import it---but with a tax of 300%. 

So let’s just say it’s “discouraged”.

Vanilla has a fascinating history. I’ve read TWO books about vanilla this past year---both written by the same woman.  Patricia Rain.  She’s known as “The Vanilla Queen” and probably the world’s expert on vanilla.  SO badass! 

As her website explains: 

“Patricia Rain is an author, educator, culinary historian, and owner of The Vanilla Company (www.vanillaqueen.com), a socially conscious, product-driven information and education site dedicated to the promotion of pure, natural vanilla, and the support of vanilla farmers worldwide.”

A few basic things I learned about vanilla to impress your friends:

1. The world’s two favorite ice cream flavors originated in Mexico---chocolate and vanilla.
2. What kind of plant does vanilla come from?  An orchid.  It's an orchid flower.  
3. WAY before Cortés hit the shores of the New World, the Mexican tribes had been cultivating vanilla for hundreds of years.  The invading Spaniards fell in love with its fragrance and (after killing thousands of Mexicans) took the delicious new spice back as booty to King Carlos of Spain.  Not “that” kind of booty.  The war kind.
4. Back in Europe, when they couldn't get the seeds to turn into anything even remotely resembling vanilla, they went back to Mexico and were all like, “Hey guys!  Sorry about killing all your friends and family.  But we can’t get these things to grow.  Could you do us a solid?”  The Totonoc Indians were still (understandably) a bit peeved about their whole civilization being destroyed so they pretended to not understand what the conquistadors were saying.  This would be the first documented instance of a Mexican pretending not to speak…well, in this case, Spanish.  You killed my family and now you want my help to grow crops?  Um…no hablo espagnol.  The problem?  Their colonial plantations didn’t have the right tiny little Mexican bees to pollinate the plants.  Mum’s the word. 
5. It wasn’t until 1841 when a slave on Madagascar’s Reunion Island off Africa, Edmond Albius, discovered that you could get vanilla if you hand-pollinated the orchids….  To this day, almost all vanilla is hand-pollinated.  
6. Bourbon Vanilla does NOT contain bourbon.  The vanilla-cultivating Bourbon Islands off Africa were colonized and named after the Bourbon line of the French throne.  But bourbon and vanilla ARE the perfect match!  
7. Artificial vanilla is actually----wait for it---cardboard.  It’s basically a wood by-product leftover after making pulp paper.  Another type of “vanillin” is made from coal tar.  So if you’re using it in your baked goods---you’re doing your dessert a disservice.  It’s the margarine of the spice world.  That is, unless you enjoy newspaper-flavored ice cream or you’re baking Christmas cookies for some shitty kid and you can’t bring yourself to give him the bag of coal he actually deserves. 
8. There are three basic Latin genus of vanilla-----Vanilla planifolia, V. tahitensis, and V. pompona.  The quality varies by farmer and producer, but Vanilla planifolia is generally considered the most fragrant.
9. Vanilla can take up to five years to produce a profit for the farmer.  Because of the time and labor involved, it is the world’s second (behind saffron) most expensive spice.
10. While it’s an easy guess that fresh vanilla beans would be best stored in the refrigerator----NOT!  They don’t like humidity and can easily get moldy.  The Bourbon ones, especially, will crystallize.

Upon squirreling my Balinese vanilla home, I promptly stored the beans in a test tube-like container I saved from the vanilla beans I bought at Fairway last summer.

I tucked the little jar into my larder and there the beans will remain----well, probably for only a week or two till I make Balinese Vanilla and Cocoa Butter Ice Cream!  I just have to figure out a recipe…

But making your own vanilla extract is easy!  The homemade version is really just infused vodka.

Okay---vodka in 50 words or less:

Vodka is vodka is vodka.  Don't let some bully bartender shame you into ordering the bogus "hand-crafted top shelf" stuff.  The house brand IS likely poorly-distilled, but the rest of it is all pretty much the same.  And if he's a good bartender---he knows this, too.

By the way, if you recall, the school bully was always the dumb kid.  Remember that next time someone tries to steal your lunch money.

My go-to vodka is a Polish brand simply called Wódka.  Last year I used it to make limoncello with Meyer Lemons.  Homemade hootch.  Pretty badass.

How to make vanilla extract?  Chop up some vanilla beans, put them in vodka, cover tightly, and let it rest in your cupboard for a few weeks.  Feel free to shake and sniff it occasionally just for fun. 

That’s it!

Here’s a tiny little jar of what I call Bourbon-Bourbon Vanilla Extract. 

It’s bourbon, infused with a bourbon vanilla bean.  Perfect for bread pudding!  To give you an idea how much vanilla to use----this is one vanilla bean in a tiny airplane bottle.  As long as the beans are submerged in the alcohol, they won’t go bad.  In fact, they’ll continue to age and flavor the alcohol.

Armed with the simple idea of infusing, you now have the tools to make everything from vanilla extract to limoncello to a catnip tincture for colds to a darn fine household cleaner.  And what is more badass than Mr. Clean?

Sometimes I think if people read my plays, they might not mess with me.  I may be quiet---but my thoughts are dangerous.  My favorite book on the craft of writing is called The Triggering Town by poet, Richard Hugo.  

He says: "To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance---not in real life I hope.  In real life try to be nice.  It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write."