By the Mystic Chef, Cynde Margritz

Food is an essential and wonderful way to nurture ourselves through this time of transition. Just as we are being taught to give up old paradigms in many other areas of our lives, so it is with food. To learn to trust and release old concepts of eating and tune in to what our bodies and intuition are telling us, can be fun, rewarding, and very freeing. Eating intuitively can also help bring us the balance we seek. We may not know why we are drawn to certain foods. Our food desires at this time can be all over the board. After 8 years of sugar-free living, I now have a sweet tooth like none I've ever imagined. Others may be leaving vegetarian life-styles or moving towards one. Everyone I know is seeking joy in whatever they're eating.

How do we experience this? In coming months we will explore ways to experience joy in cooking and eating. We will discover:

• Different foods, their origins, their properties, and how to prepare them
• How to stock your pantry and fridge for nutrition and satisfaction
• How to plan, shop, and create meals with ease and speed
• What lessons we can learn from other cultures about eating and cooking styles
• How to figure out what we're craving, why, and how we can satisfy it
• How to make healthy treats for adults and kids
• And, best of all, how to make really great food easily so that we can nourish and delight our minds and bodies as a regular part of life.

Let's begin this month by exploring a very nurturing taste, vanilla. It's an exotic taste and fragrance that has become a familiar warm, comforting smell, reminding us of Mom in the kitchen and freshly baked sugar cookies. Vanilla is an essential ingredient in baking and desserts and is recently being explored by trendy chefs as an ingredient in stir-fries and other savory dishes. One of the first recorded uses of vanilla was by the Aztecs and Mayans who mixed vanilla with chocolate to make a sacred drink. The popularity of a new food -"ice cream" - in the 1800s helped spur the American love affair with vanilla.

Vanilla, the fruit of a thick, fleshy, climbing orchid that flowers only once a year, is native to Mexico, Tahiti, Madagascar, Indonesia, and other tropical climes. Three-fourths of the world's supply comes from Madagascar. The flowers indeed only bloom for less than a day and must be painstakingly hand-pollinated to ensure a good yield of the 6"-9" pods. It takes 6 weeks after pollinating for the vanilla pod or "bean" to grow and another 7-8 months of soaking, "sweating", and fermenting to produce its unique flavor and aroma.

Vanilla beans are relatively expensive, often selling for $2-$3 each. Their flavor is well worth it, but excellent results can also be obtained with a good quality pure vanilla extract. Avoid imitation vanilla extracts which are usually made from wood products which contain chemicals. True pure vanilla has a softer quality with no bitter aftertaste. The name "French vanilla" originally applied to vanilla coming from the French Reunion Island which was favored by Parisian chefs. The island was later also known as Bourbon Island, and "bourbon vanilla" is another name for French vanilla.

Vanilla's seductively aromatic smell has a reputation as an aphrodisiac and the fragrance is regarded in aromatherapy as soothing and restorative. Vanilla is a complex flavor and fragrance with over 100 components contributing to its unique properties. Ayurveda regards the flavor as sweet and heavy, good for balancing vata and pitta body types and to be used in moderation by kapha types. Always add vanilla to cooked sauces and custards after cooking and briefly cooling in order to retain its full fragrance and flavor components.

Cherry Crepes with Warm Vanilla Custard Sauce are a wonderful dessert or brunch. They'll satisfy a craving for something sweet, soft, tart, warm, and soothing. I think we might all like to be personally enveloped in a crepe! Let the powerful effects of vanilla carry you away!

Cherry Crepes with Warm Vanilla Custard Sauce

Makes 8 crepes and serves 2 as a brunch or 4 as a dessert.
Total preparation time: 30 minutes.

Sauce:

1/4 cup sugar
4 1/2 tsp. flour
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups low fat milk (1 or 2%, preferably organic)
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Crepes:

2 large eggs
1 cup low-fat milk (1 or 2%, preferably organic)
1/3 cup water
1 Tbsp. pure vanilla extract
3 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. canola oil
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
additional canola oil and butter for cooking

Filling:

1 can good quality organic cherry pie filling (Walnut Acres is a good brand)

1. Prepare crepes. Preheat a 10" non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Place all ingredients in order listed in a blender. Blend until no lumps appear. Batter should be thin and pourable. Add a few tablespoons of water to thin if necessary.
3. Adjust burner temperature to medium. Add 1 tsp. butter and 1 tsp. canola oil to pan and swirl or use a pastry brush to coat. Make test crepe by pouring 1/3 cup batter in the skillet and swirling to spread out, making a thin layer. (If you cannot cover the skillet bottom, batter is too thick. Add a little water to remaining batter to thin.) Cook until crepe surface no longer looks shiny (less than 1 minute). Slide or flip the crepe out onto a plate. Top surface will be cooked but not brown. Lower surface of crepe will be brown and is the "outside" of the finished crepe.
4. Continue cooking crepes, re-coating skillet with butter and oil between crepes. (The butter is important for browning.) Cooked crepes may be stacked directly on each other. Properly cooked crepes will separate easily.
5. Prepare the sauce. In a 1 1/2 - 2 qt. heavy saucepan, stir together sugar, flour, nutmeg, and salt. Slowly add 1/4 cup milk and whisk until well combined. Add remaining milk and whisk to blend.
6. Bring mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat stirring frequently (takes about 5 minutes). Continue to simmer, stirring constantly for 2-3 minutes until mixture thickens slightly.
7. Beat egg yolk in a small bowl and add a little of the hot milk mixture to the egg yolk to equalize temperature. Add egg/milk mixture to remaining hot mixture in saucepan and cook one minute longer, stirring constantly.
8. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
9. Assemble crepes. Spoon about 2-3 Tbsp. pie filling down the middle of each crepe and roll to enclose. For a brunch serving, place 3-4 crepes per plate and spoon vanilla sauce over top. Two crepes are usually sufficient for a dessert serving. Enjoy!

Cynde Margritz is the Mystic Chef. She is a holistic food writer, cooking instructor, and personal chef based in central Florida. Her unique perspective includes appreciating the origins of food, as well as its nutritional, energetic, and pleasurable aspects. Her specialty is empowering people to have fun creating the foods that nourish their body and soul.

Cynde's spiritual journey into food alchemy began with the miracle of an Easy Bake Oven (who knew the power of a light bulb?), took an off-planet turn researching how to grow food in space for NASA, and came back to her roots to develop tantalizing recipes for hungry Earth-bound humans.

Cynde is currently working on a cookbook with a personalized approach. It will blend the best of Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Mediterranean and French cooking. Her husband Marc and an Indigo Dog named Kasper taste test everything. Cynde offers cooking consultations with customized recipe packets and is looking for volunteers to participate as part of an extended test kitchen. Cynde may be contacted at 321/459-2108 or via email.