Honey

[Ovenfrenzy]

Oh I love honey- I love the tastes, the varieties, the many intersting ways of packaging it. Tupelo honey from Mississippi, sourwood honey from Tennessee, orange blossom from Florida- I usually have some of each around in the pantry. The best I've had was some Italian "million wild flower" variety I got in Berkeley on vacation- it was $12 for a pint but so perfect on my English muffins for breakfast. Clover honey is good for cooking and I use it to make Mollie Katzen's chocolate honeycake. We also use clover honey in our cyser(cidar/mead blend).

[Squeat Mungry]

The honey bee is the State Insect of my home state of North Carolina! My favorite is sourwood honey -- great on biscuits with fresh butter!

Cheers,

Squeat

[fifi]

When I was a kid, my dad kept bees as a hobby. We lived in a family "compound" on the bayou so there was plenty of woodsey and meadowy space for them to forage. (That was before Houston was a "big city".) It was fun to see how the honey changed with the seasons. I don't remember what the source was, if we ever knew, but we did get some that was really dark one time. It was wonderful and I still remember the taste. The house smelled like Pooh Bear's kitchen when we had the big pots going to melt and purify the beeswax "cappings". We sold the big disks of wax to some cosmetic company.

My current favorite is a wildflower honey that comes from the Alvin TX area. Oddly enough, I found it at Kroger.

[jschyun]

I often purchase lavender honey, which I often use in creating some lovely desserts and am on the hunt for acacia honey for a spectacular cocktail that is made at Lab bar in London.

I think you can find acacia honey at Persian markets. I see it here, but I live in the U.S.

[tsquare]

I got a newsletter from ChefShop today - all about honey.

Unopened jar of chesnut honey in the pantry - need to get some figs and blue cheese...

[ruthcooks]

I have never liked honey, it's just too assertive and too sweet for me, whatever kind it is, without being mixed about 1 to 4 with soft butter for biscuits. And I'd still prefer any kind of fruit jam.

Once, however, I found a mild "Honey Jelly" in an airport shop and liked it very much. Now it's gone and the question is "which airport?" The odds are on Nashville, but I don't suppose I'll be flying there any more now that my son has moved.

[petite tête de chou]

When I was a kid, my dad kept bees as a hobby. We lived in a family "compound" on the bayou so there was plenty of woodsey and meadowy space for them to forage. (That was before Houston was a "big city".) It was fun to see how the honey changed with the seasons. I don't remember what the source was, if we ever knew, but we did get some that was really dark one time. It was wonderful and I still remember the taste. The house smelled like Pooh Bear's kitchen when we had the big pots going to melt and purify the beeswax "cappings". We sold the big disks of wax to some cosmetic company.

My current favorite is a wildflower honey that comes from the Alvin TX area. Oddly enough, I found it at Kroger.

How lucky you were! I live in a smallish community in Oregon but not small enough for my neighbors and their children to be comfortable with a modest apiary.

I would adore 'raising' bees! I was never afraid of them as a child...but I will admit, it is AWFULLY sweet stuff for a lady without a sweet-tooth to speak of.

My Mother taught me to use honey as a skin 'refiner' after an herbal (comfrey-rose-mint-lavender) steam. And how wonderful it was to lick the melting honey mask from my lips! BTY- I finished with a whipped egg-white mask and tea..sweetened with honey, of course.

[enrevanche]

Usually buy clover honey, though I love fruit blossom honeys (e.g. orange blossom) when I can get them.

I put it in tea, on toast and biscuits, and in oatmeal (for killer oatmeal, whip in one raw egg and a generous pour of honey after the oatmeal is cooked... the heat in the oatmeal cooks the egg; the honey adds both wonderful sweetness and texture.)

My grandmother used to let a generous chunk of butter get soft and then mix it with honey for spreading on hot bread.

There is allegedly a guy in NYC who lives near Central Park and operates a rooftop apiary, making "New York City Honey." I've been keeping an eye out for him at the local greenmarkets, but so far no luck.

[fifi]

My Mother taught me to use honey as a skin 'refiner' after an herbal (comfrey-rose-mint-lavender) steam.

A family story that still gets told...

Dad was robbing the bees. We were inside the house capping the frames and I was turning the centrifuge. Mother and I both had our hands full when dad came to the door with about 50 pounds of "supers" (things the frames hang in). He is banging on the door to get someone to open it for him. Mother yells for my older sister and she doesn't come immediately. Dad is starting to turn the air blue. She finally wanders in with her face and hands dripping with honey. Dad explained to her, in terms that would not suit our gentle readers, why this was not a good time for a facial.

[Verjuice]

The taste of honey is one of very, very few I cannot stand. It just tastes like the smell of grimy kindergarten fingers to me- I have a hard time explaining it. Maple syrup, please, for my tea, or whipped with butter and spread on toast (I love how it soaks the toast whereas honey rests, well-behaved and amber-eyed, in tepid puddles), stirred into yogurt, added to marinades.

No. No honey. Well, unless it's white truffle honey. And I like chestnut honey in baked goods.

Anyone tried the white Hawaiian honey?

[beans]

Once, however, I found a mild "Honey Jelly" in an airport shop and liked it very much.

I have a recipe for Honey Lemon Jelly from well preserved: pickles, relishes, jams and chutneys for the new cook by Mary Anne Dragan.

Let me know if you'd like it and I'll paraphrase/post it.

[skyflyer3]

I love this french brand of honey from Chefshop called Huguel; their wild mountain honey is thick and viscous and perfect for tea. It smells a little sharp and acrid, but it's heaven. And the Acacia honey by the same brand is awesome on thickly buttered toast and english muffins, and scones and in yogurt with some mangoes and marmalade. It has a very sunny, mild flavor, very buttery. All the other honey flavors in this line are too strong for me, but these two rock.

I also have tried the amazingly expensive white hawaaian honey, which is great in texture - very thick and creamy, almost chewy - but the flavor is very subtle. Because the texture is so thick, it's hard to use but I like it on toast as well.

I got stuck on the Huguel honeys because of a generic brand of honey I had in france called Miel de Lune, that came in these little packets at this motel where we stayed. It was fabulous! Next time I go back there, I'm picking up a jar. Perfect in tea, on butter, anything. It has a well-balanced sweetness, and is a rich, thick gold, like Lyle's Golden Syrup. Really fantastic stuff.

[Ms Neato]

I don't eat a lot of honey, but manuka claims to have magical powers.

(Okay, maybe not magical powers; but certainly it seems to be a good anti-bacterial/make things heal better type of thing.)

[Suzanne F]

Okay, a heads-up for all the honeyphiles here: I am currently working on a book titled Robbing the Bees: a Biography of Honey, by Holley Bishop. Free Press (part of Simon & Schuster) is the publisher. Rarely have I worked on such an enjoyable, well-written, fact-filled book! All sorts of information about the history of bees, bee-keeping, honey production (by bees and humans), the use of bees in warfare . . . and I'm only a little more than halfway through it. The recipes included are both ancient and modern. I suppose it will be out sometime next spring.

I never thought much about the stuff before (other than finding that leatherwood is just too strong a flavor for my palate), but now I'm fascinated.

[ExtraMSG]

Despite Suzanne's disdain for the stuff, I really like keeping a tin of Tasmanian leatherwood honey on hand:

http://earthy.com/a_gourmet_honey.htm?EDI=...c6190e3099caad9

Luckily, I have a couple local sources. I also buy a lot of honeys at farms and farmer markets and gourmet shops while I travel. I don't think it matters that much what type, but just to have a couple types in addition to your basic commercial clover honey.

[KatieLoeb]

I recently tasted a delicious artisinal honey made by a gentleman here in the Philadelphia suburbs (ironically his surname is Buzas) that was served on the side of a cheese plate I ordered at Tria. Delicious. Subtle, sweet, but not sickly-so as many more ordinary and supermarket examples tend to be.

My best honey story comes when I was driving around between Napa and Sonoma and saw a sign at the side of the road that said "Honey". We pulled down the long dirt driveway and found a table with jars of on-the-premise made honey and a coffee can that was completely on the honor system. It remains to this day, some of the most delicious honey I'd ever tasted.

[Abra]

I love the dark, slightly bitter honeys. The French miel de sapin, which is a pine honey, and chestnut honey are my very favorites, but I like the Tasmanian leatherwood a lot too. Our local "garden variety" honey is blackberry, which is nice, although light and mild.

Whenever I travel I bring back honey, to remember places by. My cupboard is full of my honey stash - little bottles from everywhere.

[Gifted Gourmet]

story from the Telegraph UK

A related story on honey has appeared only today .. it appears that there are not enough queen bees around nowadays ...

Already struggling to keep up with demand for their sweet, sticky product, Britain's bees are facing a new crisis – a shortage of queens ...each bee makes 60 flights to produce a thimble of honey. They literally work themselves to death, dying around six weeks after they have hatched, their wings tattered and torn by their efforts.  It is different for the queen, which lives for around three years. Her pheromones are strong enough to keep the colony (around 100,000 bees in the working season) together, but as her powers diminish, so does the loyalty of the workforce. "You can never raise enough queens early enough in the season, so we have them sent from Hawaii in April," says Chambers. This was until the EU banned the import of queens from the islands in December. "They included Hawaii as part of the US although it's 2,000 miles from the mainland."

This may only partially explain why the cost of honey has been rising ...

[andiesenji]

Okay, a heads-up for all the honeyphiles here: I am currently working on a book titled Robbing the Bees: a Biography of Honey, by Holley Bishop. Free Press (part of Simon & Schuster) is the publisher. Rarely have I worked on such an enjoyable, well-written, fact-filled book! All sorts of information about the history of bees, bee-keeping, honey production (by bees and humans), the use of bees in warfare . . . and I'm only a little more than halfway through it. The recipes included are both ancient and modern. I suppose it will be out sometime next spring.

I never thought much about the stuff before (other than finding that leatherwood is just too strong a flavor for my palate), but now I'm fascinated.

I wish I could get this story from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Last year we had a case of "beenapping" in the area. Unfortunately the man to whom it happened will not talk about it.

A local bee man who has been providing bees for orchard owners for many years found some of his hives abandoned when he was retrieving them at the end of the flowering season.

Apparently another bee person, instead of simply buying bees was sneaking into the orchards at night when the bees were inactive, transferring the queen to a hive in the back of his truck and waiting until sunup for the remaining bees to leave the hive and follow the scent to the new hive.

He also had vandalized the first bee man's hives that had been set out in an area within sight of the 14 freeway. He had thrown a chain around several of the hives, shut himself in his truck and then drove away, dragging those hives into others.

He was caught when someone recalled seeing a guy loading a large chain into the bed of a pickup truck not too far from where the vandalism took place.

Strange what some people will do. I don't think there is all that much money to be made in honey, unless one has a huge operation.

The honey from Buell's farm (which nearly burned in a recent wildfire) is very good, I buy it by the gallon for my holiday baking.

[nikko]

My favourite is Greek brand called 'Attiki'. It's quite mild and everyone seem to like this.

I like loukoumades (yeast doughnuts) with plenty of honey & cinnamon on top. I also make Marcella Hazan's 'carciofi sott'olio with honey' when artichokes are in season.

[tonkichi]

Leatherwood for me.

I am also working my way through a large jar of Really Raw Honey. Delicious.

[Susan G]

Is chestnut honey produced anywhere in the US? Or has our tree epidemic wiped out the producing agents?

[Gifted Gourmet]

Is chestnut honey produced anywhere in the US?  Or has our tree epidemic wiped out the producing agents?

It most certainly is being produced and is available at, where else, Zingermans!

[Adam Balic]

I quite like honey I have a few types in the house:

Mesquite honey from a trip to the US

Chestnut honey from Chinati - not that sweet and quite bitter, very good with fresh pecorino

Forest flowers from Chianti - quite floral, not suprisingly.

Italian strawberry tree honey - very perfumed, similar to Tasmanian Leatherwood, bit more macho.

Tasmanian Leatherwood - very aromatic

English Bluebell honey - quite light

Sunflower honey - again light in flavour, but an incredible golden colour

Scottish Heather honey - possibly the best of the lot

Australian Yellow Box honey - caramel toffee flavours

Spanish orange blossom - tastes like what it is.

Couple of Middle Eastern honeys, no idea about varieties

During the childhood my uncles would sometimes rob a few wild hives, the honey bearing combs were put into muslin bags, this was hung from a rafter and the drips were collected. This not quite honey, not quite nectar is possibly the sweetest thing I have ever had.

[andiesenji]

When I posted earlier I forgot to mention my favorite honey.

It is a local sage/wildflower honey sold by a beeman in Lacaster that has a permit (very hard to get) to put his hives out in the Desert Plant Preserve area. This area is protected because some very rare wildflowers grow only in that area (as well as a wonderful display of California poppies in the early spring) People come from all over the world to photograph the wildflowers in this spot.

The honey is very aromatic and quite dark in color, almost the color of maple syrup.

You can tell what it is the moment you open the container. It is unlike any other honey, certainly nothing like any other sage honey I have tried.

The bees gather pollen and nectar from the native desert sage, also known as Cleveland sage, which is a beautiful plant with some of the largest (larger than 1 inch across) and most complex flowers of any sage. (And the flowers have a wonderful scent.)

See it here.

I have a beautiful specimen plant in my front yard that is more than five feet tall and 7 feet across.

Unlike the wild plants, mine is cut back after the spring flowering (we save the stems with the seed heads because they are lovely in dried flower arrangements) and will get a second flowering in late September.

I have two pineapple sage plants on either side of the Cleveland and the right red trumpet flowers of the pineapple, contrasted with the Cleveland is spectacular. It is a busy place for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds when they are in bloom.