Can vanilla pods be blended into a paste?
I believe you could do it, but as the pods itself are really fibered you don't want to eat them I think.

What you could do is cooking the pods. For example when I make a vanilla ganache, I always bring heavy cream, vanilla seeds and the pods to a boil. Then I let it sit for approx. 30 min an take out the pods. This method can be easily adopted to make vanilla syrup.

To make vanilla sugar just put some scraped out pods into a sugar jar and let it sit for a few weeks.

So you see - you can use the pods for many things, but eating the directly doesn't seem to be popular.