Words are inadequate

I talk a lot about how the one unambiguously good thing I got out of being on the Feingold diet as a kid ("no artificial flavours, colours, or preservatives, no high-fructose corn syrup, no 'natural salicylates' from certain fruits") was real maple syrup. I don't think much about how 'vanillin' was also banned and so I developed a taste for real vanilla as well.

Some years ago Erin got into a Facebook group related to a vanilla bean co-op, and made some extract and paste (like extract but gooier, stronger, and with bits of tiny bean pods / 'caviar' in) and sugar. This seemed like a pretty neat thing but I wasn't in a headspace where I was up for a new hobby, especially not one with a multi-month lead time. So I mostly forgot about it.

A few months ago Andi mentioned that she was ordering vanilla beans and did anyone want any, or have any recommendations as to what to do with them? And I said "oh right that" and got her to order me four ounces of Vanilla × tahitensis beans, with also no real idea what I'd do with them. They showed up while Erin was here and have been infusing my apartment with a lovely scent, from inside a sealed ziplock.

This week I finally got around to putting them up for extract. Based on "standard is one ounce beans to one cup booze" and "there's no real point in doing more than double that" I figured I could make 2x375ml. One is the cheapest vodka I could find, because they recommend vodka for a starter. The other is "Sailor Jerry's spiced rum" because it sounded interesting. I decanted the booze into pint mason jars so that I could get the beans back out again afterwards, split the beans and dropped them in, and put the (labeled) jars at the back of my pantry. I'll give them a shake when I remember and test them in four months or so.

Once the extract is done I can use the beans to make vanilla sugar. Based on "one bean per cup of sugar" and "these are smallish beans, and more certainly won't hurt" I will still have around a 2.5kg (5lb) bag worth of vanilla sugar. Might end up as Xmas gifts, depending on timing.

("What do you do with vanilla sugar?" You put it in any recipe that uses white sugar and inexplicably does not include vanilla extract. Or you put it in your coffee/tea/lemonade, or use it for cookie decoration, or or or.)

Nice to have something concrete to look forward to in the fall.

Early Saturday morning, after a fairly exhausting couple of weeks, I flew back into Vancouver. I drove out to Zee's (where I was crashing for the first night) and dropped off my stuff, and then went Out And About.

I had Plans for my day: exchange my phone, make it to a Vancouver yoga class (for the first time in I think around five months) followed by a yin yoga class for relaxation and stretching, then dinner, then a couple of movies at the Cinematheque which is the local artsy / old movie theatre. At eight they were showing The Wicker Man which I've not seen, followed by Kill List which was directed by Ben Wheatley, who also did the brilliant? visually stunning? incomprehensible? A Field in England.

Like so many plans, these did not really survive contact with the enemy.

I did start by, finally, succesfully exchanging my overpriced new phone for a slightly less overpriced one. New phone's name is Faris, after the breeding-program-produced general who hears the voices of the Wild Machines in Mary Gentle's sprawling late-15th-century alternate history Ash. This is perhaps my favourite name for an electronic device yet, and tied with Keishi Mirabara Hamster for my favourite name for anything. (Keishi was my rescue hamster who lived in a series of tubes; Keishi Mirabara is also a character in Raphael Carter's amazing post-cyberpunk The Fortunate Fall who existed primarily online.)

I then sat around in Pacific Centre Mall with my new phone hooked up to my laptop, playing the Restore From (different) Backup game. This was, eventually, successful, although not quickly enough that I could make it to the four PM yoga class. I did make it out to the yin class, at least, by way of attempting to catch the #19 bus, giving up, and catching a different bus that got me most of the way there.

The yin class was lovely and stretchy. I've really missed yoga in Vancouver but that's a different post.

Afterwards I walked out Kingsway to attempt to catch a #19 back into downtown, where I could find dinner and wander to the Cinematheque. I waited ten minutes in the cold and wind before giving up. When I lived in Coal Harbour the #19 was the bus I'd take to get to/from the Skytrain downtown, and it would occasionally just decide to not bother showing up. I suppose it's nice that some things never change.

So I grumbled, and went and got a carshare car. By that point I realised that I could either get dinner, or catch the 8pm start of The Wicker Man, but not both, and dinner was kind of important. And I was irritated enough (and, likely, hungry enough) to give up on the whole idea of movies altogether.

Instead I drove off to the big Chapters bookstore on Granville, and picked myself up a consolation copy of Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, which I am told can be summed up as "lesbian necromancers in space". I now have a large collection of 2019-published space opera that I'd like to start making some headway on.

And somewhere around the 'wandering around in a bookstore' portion of the evening I decided to take myself on a date, because it's been awhile since I've deliberately done anything nice for myself. So I went and had acceptable pad thai, and then walked a couple of blocks to a cheesecake restaurant that I'd been to once before and I recalled as being, mm, sort of jazz-cafe-like.

Which it was: dim lighting, small tables, no real food but decent cheesecake and tea, and a guy playing the baby grand piano. He was enjoying himself, too, in a room full of people mostly ignoring him. I've meant to ask Moira what it's like to perform as background. It seems like something that'd be unpleasantly ego-bruising. I must have watched and listened for half an hour while I was slowly eating, and he seemed to appreciate the audience. I'm not the biggest fan of piano in general: it all sort of blends together in my head, for whatever reason. It's lovely to see someone doing a thing and doing it well and having fun with it, though.

Turned out to be a good evening despite the collapse of half my plans, is I guess what I'm saying.