Katra replied:

>> you should slit the beans, scrape out the pulp, and add both the bean
>> husks and the pulp to the pudding when you start to cook it. At the
>> end of cooking, fish the bean husks out.
>>
> You add the husks too? Interesting.
> Most cooking shows I've seen just add the pulp and put the husks aside
> to make extract, or they will grind the husks prior to adding them
> rather than fishing them out.

Might as well use the husks in the pudding, since they will add flavor to
it. If you want to make vanilla extract, then you can do as you say. Or you
can simply put the husks into a jar of sugar and shake the jar every once in
a while; over time, the sugar will become vanilla-flavored.

I'm curious as to what might be used to grind the husks. It seems that
they'd be too damp and sticky to work well in a burr grinder, and they'd
also be too sticky to work in a blender-type grinder. I thought a meat
grinder mechanism would work, but you'd have to have a *lot* of vanilla
beans to make that worthwhile, much more than I generally have on hand.

Bob