"Steve Freides" wrote:
>
>>Holy Toledo! We were in the local Whole Foods market today - vanilla
>>beans are sold _one_ at a time, in glass or plastic jars, at a cost of
>>between $6 and $12 - that's for one freakin' bean.

There is no longer any reason to use vanilla beans or extract when
preparing any dish in which it gets heated. Modern chemistry for at
least twenty years has produced imitation vanilla that no human can
tell from natural vanilla... save your money.