Oh Honey!
I’ve become a big fan of local honey. It actually started a long time ago when I worked with a man who kept his own beehives and brought me a jar of his honey. The bees dined on blueberry bushes, so this honey was a revelation. Before then I had no idea that there was anything but Golden Blossom clover honey, which I enjoyed in a cup of tea, with lemon, when I had a cold as my mom prescribed. While I was growing up, an indulgent lunch would be a bread and butter sandwich with Golden Blossom honey spread over it – I still don’t understand how my kids can’t like that one! But that was pretty much it for me and honey.
After that blueberry discovery, I didn’t really find any interesting honey for a long time. And then, as I began to visit farmer’s markets and farm stands, I began to see displays with local honey. And on closer inspection I discovered there was honey cultivated from other single source plants, and they all tasted different. The floral notes were distinctively different between the varieties and I’d usually pick up a jar to have a special flavor to add to my pantry and my morning oatmeal.
Skip ahead to last spring. I began to read that a homeopathic solution for seasonal allergies was local, unprocessed honey. Eating a spoonful of local honey a day could have the same affect as going weekly for allergy shots, since our bodies build up resistance to local pollens in response to the pollen in the honey. The key to this treatment is that the honey has not been heated and processed, which would kill the beneficial pollens, antioxidants, vitamins and amino acids. I started to take my daily spoonful of local honey picked up at my local Whole Foods, and I barely noticed any spring allergies.
Yesterday I visited the Sunday farmer’s market in the parking lot of my Whole Foods and found a beekeeper selling a wide variety of honeys and beeswax products crafted by his wife. After tasting about 6 varieties, I was ready to choose the cranberry. But as we started to chat, he reminded me that the best honey for allergies is the wildflower since the bees feed on all of the local plants in my region. Sold!
Finally, I learned another use for honey last week that I picked up on the Facebook page of one of our local farms. They mentioned that honey is a great treatment for healing burns. Slathering honey on a burn will help to prevent infections and help the skin to heal with minimal scarring. Yesterday’s beekeeper told me the reason was that there is a natural hydrogen peroxide in the honey, perfect for combating infectious bacteria. Whatever. Now I know how to deal with my constant burn mishaps while cooking.
Oh, and did I ever tell you that honey is great in desserts? If not, just check out this post about my aunt’s honeycakes!
Free Corn!
Now that it’s September, Saturdays are all about soccer. Since Louisa joined a travel team, our schedule is generally governed by the time and location of her game, which is usually not in a notable locale. But last Saturday was different because her game took us deep into farm country, to a location that we remembered from last year had excellent roadside barbecue. You smell the smoke from the barbecue beckoning all drivers to pull over for some ribs, pulled pork, or chicken. Which is what we and several other soccer families did after the game on the way home. That, and the stop after that one, helped to soften the disappointment of our team’s win turning into a tie at the final few seconds of the game.
After we all had our fill of food at the barbecue stand, we continued up the road to the farm stand that we had noticed on the way down. There were baskets of shiny apples just waiting for us to pull off the road. We bought apples, seckel pears, peach jam, and apple butter. Plus, the corn was free! For every dollar you spent on the other items you could take a free ear of corn. Apparently the farm was apologetic that, because of all the rain, they couldn’t spray as they normally did and some of the corn had worms. That’s really not a big deal in my book – you just chop off the end with the worms and the rest is fine. But the other reason they were giving away corn was that after Labor Day nobody buys corn. Does that make any sense to you? It sure didn’t make sense to me. The corn was some of the best I’ve had all season, not in small part due to the fact that it had been just picked. I took home 20 ears, and immediately I blanched and froze about half, saved some for dinner last night, and dehydrated the rest.
Now Joe is regretting that he didn’t take our full allotment because he didn’t think I could use it all! Next time dear, listen to your wife.
Turkey Minus the Pilgrims
Turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, must be Thanksgiving? No. Labor Day. It was all Joe’s idea, and it was a pretty good one at that. He was in the mood to smoke something for dinner on Labor Day instead of making a traditional barbecue with hamburgers, sausage or hot dogs. And being the lovely, charming spouse that I always try to be, I agreed to his suggestion of turkey breast.
Many people I know cook turkey throughout the year, as a lighter, leaner dinner option. Not me. If I’m having meat, I’m not going to worry about the fat content, just give me a smaller portion. And turkey is forever and ever emblazoned in my brain as a Thanksgiving meat, so I rarely think to cook it. But this smoked turkey made me realize the error of my ways. Since it isn’t the season for this bird, I was only able to find a full turkey – and I’m NOT dealing with that mess outside of the official holiday – or a half turkey breast, which was good enough. The smoking added a tasty underlying flavor to the meat that made it much more interesting than a turkey cutlet which I’ve tried on rare occasions when the recipe in my magazine sounded interesting, but was usually regrettable and forgettable.
Obviously those were mashed potatoes on the side, and the greens were bok choy salad, one of my favorite non-dairy sources of calcium, and one of Louisa’s least favorite. Someday you’ll thank me for this kid when you can mix up your meals with interesting vegetables. As now I may mix up my meals with another protein thanks to Joe.