NOW is the time to be making holiday gifts that need to be infused, tinctured, or otherwise "soak". Yesterday I whipped up a bunch of jars of vanilla sugar. The vanilla beans will happily sit in the sugar (I used raw turbinado sugar) for a month, flavoring the sugar....mmmm. Basically I just cut vanilla beans in half lenghtwise, put them in pint and quart jars, and filled the jars with sugar. But this blog post describes the whole process much better, and has pretty pictures to boot. And, by the way, buying vanilla beans in the store is sooooo expensive. If you want a bunch for baking, cooking, or making your own vanilla sugar or vanilla extract, I'd recommend calling Ameriherb and ordering some. They're delicious, plump, and reasonably priced.