i have almost 3doz beans and they dried out HARD. i couldn't bear to throw them away so i tried to find a way to save them. i soaked one in water, didn't work and i don't think that would've been a good idea. so i put them all in a canning jar with a new piece of bread. and changed the bread when it got dried out. it took a couple of weeks but they are like new! nice....soft....YEAH!!!

Good save!
Good to know! I keep my beans in double zipper bags with the air pushed out and haven't had a problem, yet. But I did save some scraped pods to make vanilla sugar and forgot to put them into the container with sugar and they were hard and crispy. I put them into the sugar, anyway, and they are still aromatic. Otherwise I was going to put them into some good vodka and make vanilla vodka.
Where do you get yours from? I found a great supplier on eBay for organic beans, really inexpensive!

great idea with the bread
i never would have thought of that. Filing that one away in my brain.

frostingal, care to share who on ebay you get them from??

i got my organic ones from amazon

No problem, Auryn! My supplier is organic-vanilla on eBay. http://myworld.ebay.com/organic-vanilla/
With their prices I can afford to use real vanilla all the time, unless it is for an item in which the seeds wouldn't be appetizing or inappropriate. Usually only some decorated cakes and my fondant.