Good Morning,

I am Melanie Ferreira, Chef, and Nurtritional Consultant and recently certified in Feng Shui. I have been teaching about Food & Healing & Chinese Medicine for the past 35 years. It is 6:00 am in San Diego, California and I am in Roger Green's room where I am getting ready to leave for the Taoist healing retreat that I will be teaching with Roger in Zacca Lakes just outside Santa
Barbara. I was awoken by Leslie as he wanted me to read the story of the chocolate saga here at the Feng Shui Conference.

I usually don't eat or crave chocolate. It only took me 33 years to be able to say this! What I really crave is organic, local, sustainable, nutrient dense, well prepared meals. So chocolate, believe it or not is not up there on my top ten list. I was not one of the women begging Leslie for my chocolate fix. I wanted the brown rice, the raw cultured butter from grass fed cows, the egg from the pastured chicken, the salmon that lived wild in the sea. I was one of the few left on Monday eating the organic lunch. A delicious cream of mushroom soup, a luscious salad with organic free range chicken, a luxious breeze off the sound, a beautiful sunny day. Then the chocolate arrived. I thought to myself - I will just have a bite. Before I could put my fork into the deep chocolate mousse I was taken by the exquisite layers of chocolate with the swirls of chocolate sauce next to the 3 organic rasberries looking up at me. From 35 years of critiquing
food I knew this was no ordinary chocolate. I bite into the first bite. The silky texture swirled throughout my mouth, the organic rasberries burst with flavor - aah just like the rasberries I used to pick with my father when I was a little girl - this was real food! I couldn't get enough. I too was now seduced by the chocolate hormones. I was dancing, I was floating, the endorphins were taking hold. I was in love again! I asked for seconds. Thank you Leslie for remembering the chocolate!

Melanie Ferreira
Chef Instructor
Nutritionist
Feng Shui Consultant
Head of Slow Food Hudson Valley New York

mferreira8@optonline.net