I ended up getting a couple too despite the fact they can grow 10 meters + lol. One I put in a 12 inch pot with regular potting mix with an upside down tomato cage. I just wrap it around and around. It's growing like crazy. The other I tied to a palm tree with panty hose (knee hi's) and it seems to be slowly beginning to attach itself to the tree. It's in regular, sandy Florida soil (no supplements or fertilizer). If we haven't any had rain for 2 or 3 weeks, I've watered deeply and allowed to completely dry out again. In the summer we have regular rain and that's all they get, lol. Definitely has grown a few feet, but still needs the attachment to the tree. We had a few nights where it was down close to 32 degrees but I don't think ever got to freezing. It's been a couple of weeks, no damage whats so ever. :> They are supposed to be epiphytic (sp?) in nature so I'm starting to think the potting medium is not super critical.

Slow would have been good, I think, Carol! This is a recipe from 1945. Hand-mincing was all that was possible. They'd have ended up with fewer, larger pieces, and in retrospect, I think that would actually have been better than lots of very tiny ones. You could pick them out. The idea of making the vanilla sugar ahead of time is a good one too. I processed the sugar with pieces of the bean. And processed, and processed. I ended up with sugar so superfine that some of it was powdered, and my whole kitchen was covered with a fine white dust. But the bits of bean were not fine enough. I started the sifting process. Parts passing through the strainer still looked like tiny bugs -- not the look I wanted in my cheesecake! Changing to my finest tea strainer, I couldn't get the sugar to pass through. By that time I just wanted to get finished, and I used Penzey's double-strength vanilla. It was late, I was tired and hungry for dinner, so I was really glad to have the cake in the oven, and glad I had finally made this recipe. Then I saw the cup of sour cream sitting on the counter. Sigh. So I still have not tried Katish's Cheesecake. I'll report back on how Sort-of Katish's Cheesecake tastes. It actually rose to the top of the pan, so the extra cup pof volume might have been a problem (or might just have risen up and stayed okay). Here is a link that might be useful: Katish's Cheesecake

I can tell you from experience. Unfortunately, I made custard based "vanilla" the other night. I even put the bean in with the seeds while heating it. And never remembered to put in the vanilla extract. It was really good frozen custard, but it had very very little vanilla flavor. Or course, it could be that I just like it to have a much more pronounced vanilla flavor, so I'll stick with my "both" recipe.

Just so happens that in today's mail I got my Organic Madagascar beans from Saradooky. They look and smell great. I plan to make vanilla extract with some of them for holiday use so I opted for the organic. Who knows if they're really organic but I thought it would be a good choice. Nice beans.