Homemade Vanilla Extract

~gd

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baymule said:
I buy vanilla at the store and spray the chickens with it to keep the gnats off of them. It really works!
That is funny because vanilla was the secret ingredient in my racoon bait! I set up a video camera to study the beasts and they went to the vanilla is preference to fish based cat food [which is often recommended for coons] I guess if you have a strong coop....~gd
 

Emerald

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~gd said:
baymule said:
I buy vanilla at the store and spray the chickens with it to keep the gnats off of them. It really works!
That is funny because vanilla was the secret ingredient in my racoon bait! I set up a video camera to study the beasts and they went to the vanilla is preference to fish based cat food [which is often recommended for coons] I guess if you have a strong coop....~gd
You should try grape jelly. I use it in my raccoon traps and they love the stuff and I have stopped catching every cat in the neighborhood(and one small mutt dog). I also found putting the trap up on top of a few bales of straw seemed to keep me from catching the skunk. so I am gonna go out on a limb and say that the skunk does not like to climb too much..
 

~gd

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Emerald said:
~gd said:
baymule said:
I buy vanilla at the store and spray the chickens with it to keep the gnats off of them. It really works!
That is funny because vanilla was the secret ingredient in my racoon bait! I set up a video camera to study the beasts and they went to the vanilla is preference to fish based cat food [which is often recommended for coons] I guess if you have a strong coop....~gd
You should try grape jelly. I use it in my raccoon traps and they love the stuff and I have stopped catching every cat in the neighborhood(and one small mutt dog). I also found putting the trap up on top of a few bales of straw seemed to keep me from catching the skunk. so I am gonna go out on a limb and say that the skunk does not like to climb too much..
I think my wildlife trapping days are gone for good but I will pass the grape jelly idea along. I caught my neighbors tom cat just about every night and frankly the tom was starting to be P O ed about it :lol: some one recommended marshmellows for coons and possum. the collored ones didn't work so I figured out that the coons liked the smell but the possums must have thought they looked like eggs once I got the video camera I discovered that i had an old sow coon and I was catching her young ones as she was traing them to hunt. call me a softy but I shut down the trap and started feeding dog feed moving it farther from my coop each night. You might be out on a limb because skunks don't see well [about 10 feet max] ask a bee keeper about their climbing ability maybe they like bees better than grape jelly. ~gd
 

heatherlynnky

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I'm ordering more beans and learning to make home made pudding today. GAG no more prepackaged ANYTHING
 

baymule

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heatherlynnky said:
I'm ordering more beans and learning to make home made pudding today. GAG no more prepackaged ANYTHING
Aw, come on! Don't you want a little Eau-de-Beaver's-Butt in your instant pudding?? :lol:
 

heatherlynnky

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If I could have undone all the fake "vanilla" stuff I had ever eaten right then and there I would have. Still making me gag.
 

~gd

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heatherlynnky said:
If I could have undone all the fake "vanilla" stuff I had ever eaten right then and there I would have. Still making me gag.
do you have any idea of the cost of 'castorium [the stuff from a beaver's butt] remember the world production is only 250 pounds per year which makes it rarer than Dimond. Do you really think some one is going to bottle it and sell in supermarkets when there is an artifical replacement made from trees?
 

k15n1

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Cooks illustrated reviewed vanilla a while back. For baking, the artificial stuff was preferred by their panel or whatever. But there's two types. The cheap one uses methyl-vanillin (it's the CH3 in the Wikipedia picture, below). You want the ethyl-vanillin for baking. But for non-baked stuff, I think the extract is probably better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanillin

Honestly, vanilla never seems to come through very strong in baked goods---not in my experience. But maybe I've been using the cheap stuff all along
 
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