Vanilla Ice Cream

article and photographs by Jill MacGregor

A	Veisinia Veikoso lives in Vaini on the island of Tongatapu. Vei loves ice cream. She likes hokey-pokey ice cream, chocolate ice cream, and best of all, vanilla ice cream. But there's one thing she's always wondered — where does the vanilla come from?
B	One afternoon in the holidays, Vei visits a vanilla plantation. Vanilla plants grow well in Tonga, where it is warm and wet and the soil is fertile. The vanilla vines grow in the shelter of tall banana trees and coconut palms. There are lots of long, green vanilla beans waiting to be picked.
C	Salesi shows Vei which beans are ready to pick. When they are ready, the beans turn slightly yellow at one end. Vei all round the vines and picks one bean at a time so that she won't bruise them. The beans then have to be cured. They are taken to the curing sheds in Nuku'alofa. Curing is the process of fermenting and drying the beans to produce the vanilla flavouring.
D	Vei carefully tips her beans into a big wire basket. The basket is lowered into boiling water for a short time. The steaming hot beans are tipped into a wooden "heat box" and quickly covered with woollen blankets to keep the heat in. The beans "sweat" for forty-eight hours until they turn brown. Then they have to be dried.
E	On sunny days, the beans can be dried outside in the hot sun. This month, there have been too many rainy days. The beans are spread on wire racks in a drying room. They are left to cure for two months. It's noisy inside the shed. Fans and dehumidifiers are whirring loudly, removing the moisture from the beans. There is a strong, sweet smell of vanilla.
F	Vei touches the beans. Their shiny skins are oily, and they are soft and supple. When the beans are ready, they are tied in bundles of a hundred and stored in wooden boxes for three months so that the flavour will develop. Each month, the beans are checked to make sure they are dry enough. If there is too much moisture, the beans could turn mouldy.
G	Natural vanilla is expensive because it takes so long to make. When Vei’s beans are ready, they will be exported to other countries and crushed to make vanilla oil and essences for use in cakes, desserts, chocolate, medicines, shampoo, perfumes, and ... ice cream!

Questions

Highlight the word in the  text has a similar meaning to each of the following:

1	thought about (A)Wandering
2	place where many trees are grown (B)
3	good for growing crops (B)
4	protection (B)
5	tall tree without branches (B)
6	pull off the vine (C)
7	at the right time (C)
8	just a little bit (C)
9	make a mark by touching too hard (C)
10	work buildings (C)
11	make (C)
12	drops out of something (D
13	let down slowly (D)
14	let out water (D)
15	machines for removing water (E)
16	small amounts of water (E)
17	able to bend easily (F)
18	get stronger (F)
19	looked at carefully (F)
20	covered with mould (F)
21	sold and sent to other countries (G)
22	pressed in a machine (G

Put the words in the correct order for producing vanilla beans.

picking        drying        growing        bundling        crushing        sweating        exporting

growing        picking        sweating      growing  Picking    drying  Sweating bundling Exporting Crushing       bundling        exporting        crushing

Describe how vanilla is made

Vanilla goes through a long process.You have to hope that it rains alot so the Vanilla can grow.First you have to grow the Vanilla bean.But you have to hope that it rains.It is grown under banana trees and Coconut Palms.You have to Plant them next to a warm and wet place were the soil is fertile.When they are ready one part of the plant turns a little Yellow.Then you have to pick one piece at a time so you won’t bruise them.When they are cured they go to the cure sheds were they start Drying it.It is then lowered into boiling water for a short time.When they are hot and Steaming they are left to sweat for Forty Eight Hours.When they turn brown they are needed to be dryed.They can only be dried on hot sunny days.They start bundling them from using wire racks.When they are ready they are sent to others countries and then crushed in to vanilla oil to make cakes and ice cream.