Vanilla: America's Favorite Ice Cream Flavor

Vanilla is America's favorite ice cream and  dairy dessert flavor. Vanilla flavoring (I'll get to that in a moment) accounted for more than 28 percent of the ice cream sold in super markets this year. In second place, chocolate, accounted for 11.5 percent of  sales.  What's magic about vanilla? The flavor of course. It's used on its own or to enhance or enrichen other flavors. 

But did you know that vanilla comes from an orchid? Yes vanillaa is the only edible fruit from an orchid, but not just any orchid. Only two types: Vanilla planifolia Andrews and Vanilla tahitenis Moore. If you saw the raw vanilla bean fruit you might mistake it for a green bean so plentiful and inexpensive in Bush's fresh vegetable section.

To make vanilla, the green beans are dipped in boiling water to kill  them then dried and stored in racks. The time from picking the green bean to have a useable vanilla bean is roughly a year.