Recipes: why honey instead of sugar
Processed Sugar
A friend of mine, Andrew, noticed that when his children ate food he prepared with processed sugar, their behavior and temperament changed. They had problems focusing and would act out, and sometimes this behavior would last for 24 hours after eating the food he prepared. He gradually shifted his family's diet to include one which replaced processed sugar with local unprocessed honey, and the results upon his children's emotional ease impressed him. They could focus for a longer period of time, and were calmer.
Andrew noticed that eating raw, unprocessed honey had an impact on him as well. In his 30's, Andrew developed an allergy to honey bee stings. He had two close calls after being stung, and needed to be taken to the hospital. His allergist made him carry an epipen wherever he went. After ten years of eating raw, unprocessed local honey, Andrew received a report from his allergist that he was no longer allergic to honey bee stings.
It is important to note that correlation does not imply causation. However, Andrew is happy that bee stings no longer threaten him and he enjoys not having to carry around his epipen anymore. He believes that changing his diet to include raw, unprocessed honey made him no longer allergic to honey bees.
I asked Andrew for some recipes to include here on this site, and he has agreed. I hope you enjoy them. He is a great chef!
August's Recipe: Brother Adam's Mead
I am reading Eva Crane's Book of Honey, where I found a good deal of information about making mead.
One of my favorites is by Brother Adam. You can find his biography using the link below.
Here is his recipe
Note: Brother Adam argues it's a lot easier to make larger quantities of mead at a time.
1. Use clean rainwater or distilled water.
2. Use mild flavored honey (Our wildflower honey will do)
3. Sterilize the honey by boiling with the water solution for 1 to 2 minutes only.
4. Sterilize the vessels to be used for fermentation by washing with hot boiled water.
5. Using either a wine or sherry cask, pour in musk while boiling hot. Leave space at top, close hole at top with wad of cotton wool.
6. Use pure-cultured grape wine yeast, such as a Maury, that can be found at a wine making shop. Add yeast when the must has cooled to 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Close up hole immediately after adding yeast with a fermentation valve. Add no chemicals whatsoever.
8. The stormy fermentation period will start after 36 hours, and last for 6-8 weeks for a light wine and 3-4 months for a more heavy one. Keep the temperature constant at 64 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
9. Once the mead has cleared, decant it, siphoning off the clear liquid that should be stored in a clean cask.
10. Keep the cask in the cellar for at least two years. Brother Adam thinks that your mead will be better than the finest wines if you mature it in an oak cask for 7 years.
July's recipe
Blueberry Honey Preserves
Total Time - 40 minutes
Ingredients – Honey, Blueberries….
While on a quest to procure the perfect accompaniment for my Thanksgiving Turkey-wich from our local organic turkey farm – yes, we actually have a turkey farm one town over – I opted for fresh blueberries instead of cranberries largely because I am, at best, indifferent on cranberries but find a way to include fresh blueberries on or in just about anything. Except eggs… That’s why Cholula was invented.
A very important disclaimer, this recipe is for small-batch preserves and is not suitable for canning or long-term storage because it does NOT guarantee pasteurization so best make what you can store in the fridge and consume within two weeks.
That said, the first task is have a trusted source of high-quality, raw honey. Since honey is also something that can be incorporated into just about anything – even eggs (ever have a bacon/sausage and egg biscuit with honey?) – and is almost always preferable to processed or even raw sugar, best to have several jars on hand. However, for this, a half jar will suffice.
The easiest quantity to remember for your inaugural blueberry batch is simply
1 ½ pints of fresh, Organic (if possible) rinsed blueberries
1 jar of honey
Splash of water
No lemon juice? No. No pectin? No…
Many recipes DO call for lemon juice both for flavoring and to lower the pH to assist “setting” your Preserves and many call for pectin to make it jelly-like. As it turns out, blueberries naturally have sufficient pectin so there is no need to add lemon juice to help it along and no need to add more. Though, that is entirely up to you.
Begin with a thick-bottomed pot or pan (heavier duty makes for more even heat distribution), add a splash of water. Two tablespoons can suffice as a splash but this will all boil off so the exact amount is not critical. The water will eliminate the risk of scorching your blueberries when you add them but also allows the blueberry “pulp” to cook a little longer making it just a little richer. Set your stove to a medium-high setting. You will need to bring the mixture to a boil but not an aggressive or rapid boil.
Add one-half pint of blueberries to a heat-proof bowl and set aside.
Add one full pint of blueberries and approximately one-half of the jar of honey to your pot or pan. The honey not only provides the sweetness but also the liquid for the Preserves. Gigantic, plump and juicy blueberries with tons of liquid but a milder flavor will behave differently than smaller, tarter, richer berries so feel free to adjust to taste BEFORE you heat the mixture. Do NOT sample boiling blueberries and honey mixture!!!
As this mixture begins to boil, the berries will naturally break down the moisture from the berries, the honey and the water will create a foamy, frothy and fragrant concoction that will need to be stirred occasionally as the berries need to heat evenly.
This may boil for approximately 20 minutes but keep an eye on it as you do not want to overcook your berries.
After about 20 minutes of boiling, the mixture will stop looking like blueberry foam and will start to “goo up” and begin to resemble Polyjuice potion, or the Midge Water Marshes, or the surface of Dagobah. You’re very close! Give it another 5 minutes or so and look for a mixture that appears goopy and syrupy with a little free-standing liquid and then remove from the heat.
In that heat-proof bowl that we mentioned early, pour your blueberry goo over you bowl of room temperature blueberries and then gently stir it all together, cover loosely and set aside to cool.
We are not cooking these last blueberries but are instead heating them and softening them just by incorporating them into our bowl of goo. Our final batch of Preserves will be a mixture of blueberry goo, a little bit of pulp and whole berries that have not been cooked away.
Once the mixture cools to room temperature or something close to it, go ahead and refrigerate it which will “set” the naturally occurring pectin from the blueberries and when you are ready for a sandwich or a muffin or side dressing or something more extravagant, you will have something far healthier and immeasurably superior to anything found in a grocery store.