Sugar, ah honey honey, you are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you
I asked Wild Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear if he would be a product demonstration model so I wouldn’t be stuck taking photos of three bottles of honey by their lonesomes. That wouldn’t be interesting at all.
Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear said, “Fine. As long as people don’t think I’m some sort of sex object. I have deep thoughts and write Texas Cowboy Poetry. I was going to be a headliner at the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas but I was disqualified at the last minute because I can’t ride a horse. Damn those people from Alpine. They must hate little bears.”
So, medical reasons have necessitated that I switch from coffee to tea. I grew up with a family that drank tea, so it’s not like I’m not used to it. I’ve always enjoyed hot tea. Iced tea, not so much. I especially dislike sweetened ice tea. When you put sugar into iced tea, you’re doing the Devil’s work and inviting Satan into your house. I will indulge myself and add a little honey into my hot tea because I love Jesus and have such self-respect for myself, I would never allow heavily processed white sugar in my cup.
According to the internets, there are three types of honey:
1) Heavily processed, filtered and pasteurized (boiled)
2) Raw
and
3) Bear.
The 5 pound family sized processed honey cost me $2.00/pound. The “bear” honey ran about $5.00/pound. And, the jar of raw honey cost approximately $8.00/pound.
Processed honey tastes like, well, “processed honey.” It has this sort of sweet/bitter aftertaste. It’s fine for cooking, and probably fine for hot beverages or brewing mead. I know my grandmother used to frequently give me lots of it mixed with bourbon, hot water, and lemon when I was a toddler and sick. It made me feel really good and allowed me to get to sleep.
Raw honey seems a bit more difficult to quantify. I’d venture to say that raw honey is like wine. There is a wide variety of it and they all have their different flavours. This particular jar of raw honey is from up the parkway from me. It hasn’t crystalized and it has the consistency of soft butter. It tastes sweet, but doesn’t have the nasty aftertaste that I find in processed honey. This particular company has four or five different types of honey based on the types of vegetation that is near the hives. Given its cost, I save it for putting on something without strong flavor so I can enjoy the fine honey flavour. I’d go as far as to call it, “The Good Stuff.”
I learnt a couple of other things on the internets verified by legitimate food scientists:
1) There’s a rumor out there that says that if you boil or cook honey, it turns to poison. The kind that makes you sick, not the rock band. This is “B.S.” as they like to call it. You’re not going to want to stand there and boil it forever and ever, but if you want to toss it on some cooked food while it’s still in the pan and toss it around to get it hot before serving. It’s gong to be just fine.
2) The second and more potentially dangerous belief is that if someone who has really bad pollen allergies eats local honey made with local pollen, they’re less likely to have allergic reactions. This is not only total “B.S.”, it’s a dirty damn lie! If someone is extremely allergic to local pollen, then local honey is absolutely the last type of honey they should eat. It’s the same pollen in the raw honey that makes you allergic. These individuals could go into anaphylactic shock and die if they ate raw local honey. Especially the type with chunks of pollen in it.
So, survey says, if I’m just wanting to knock up the flavour of a hot beverage or sweeten some stir fried chicken or beef, I’m using the much, much cheaper processed honey. If I’m eating some $14.00/pound fine cheese, or some fresh fruit, I’m using the raw honey to drizzle over it.
Afterwards: I asked Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear, “Who the hell helped you put on that bowtie?” He said, “I asked Texas Aggie Monkey.” I warned him, “Don’t ever let a monkey help you put on a tie. They always mess it up and your tie is going to smell like bananas until it’s dry cleaned.”
That is all.
Sugar, ah honey honey, you are my candy girl, and you got me wanting you
I asked Wild Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear if he would be a product demonstration model so I wouldn’t be stuck taking photos of three bottles of honey by their lonesomes. That wouldn’t be interesting at all.
Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear said, “Fine. As long as people don’t think I’m some sort of sex object. I have deep thoughts and write Texas Cowboy Poetry. I was going to be a headliner at the Lone Star Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas but I was disqualified at the last minute because I can’t ride a horse. Damn those people from Alpine. They must hate little bears.”
So, medical reasons have necessitated that I switch from coffee to tea. I grew up with a family that drank tea, so it’s not like I’m not used to it. I’ve always enjoyed hot tea. Iced tea, not so much. I especially dislike sweetened ice tea. When you put sugar into iced tea, you’re doing the Devil’s work and inviting Satan into your house. I will indulge myself and add a little honey into my hot tea because I love Jesus and have such self-respect for myself, I would never allow heavily processed white sugar in my cup.
According to the internets, there are three types of honey:
1) Heavily processed, filtered and pasteurized (boiled)
2) Raw
and
3) Bear.
The 5 pound family sized processed honey cost me $2.00/pound. The “bear” honey ran about $5.00/pound. And, the jar of raw honey cost approximately $8.00/pound.
Processed honey tastes like, well, “processed honey.” It has this sort of sweet/bitter aftertaste. It’s fine for cooking, and probably fine for hot beverages or brewing mead. I know my grandmother used to frequently give me lots of it mixed with bourbon, hot water, and lemon when I was a toddler and sick. It made me feel really good and allowed me to get to sleep.
Raw honey seems a bit more difficult to quantify. I’d venture to say that raw honey is like wine. There is a wide variety of it and they all have their different flavours. This particular jar of raw honey is from up the parkway from me. It hasn’t crystalized and it has the consistency of soft butter. It tastes sweet, but doesn’t have the nasty aftertaste that I find in processed honey. This particular company has four or five different types of honey based on the types of vegetation that is near the hives. Given its cost, I save it for putting on something without strong flavor so I can enjoy the fine honey flavour. I’d go as far as to call it, “The Good Stuff.”
I learnt a couple of other things on the internets verified by legitimate food scientists:
1) There’s a rumor out there that says that if you boil or cook honey, it turns to poison. The kind that makes you sick, not the rock band. This is “B.S.” as they like to call it. You’re not going to want to stand there and boil it forever and ever, but if you want to toss it on some cooked food while it’s still in the pan and toss it around to get it hot before serving. It’s gong to be just fine.
2) The second and more potentially dangerous belief is that if someone who has really bad pollen allergies eats local honey made with local pollen, they’re less likely to have allergic reactions. This is not only total “B.S.”, it’s a dirty damn lie! If someone is extremely allergic to local pollen, then local honey is absolutely the last type of honey they should eat. It’s the same pollen in the raw honey that makes you allergic. These individuals could go into anaphylactic shock and die if they ate raw local honey. Especially the type with chunks of pollen in it.
So, survey says, if I’m just wanting to knock up the flavour of a hot beverage or sweeten some stir fried chicken or beef, I’m using the much, much cheaper processed honey. If I’m eating some $14.00/pound fine cheese, or some fresh fruit, I’m using the raw honey to drizzle over it.
Afterwards: I asked Texas Aggie Armadillo Bear, “Who the hell helped you put on that bowtie?” He said, “I asked Texas Aggie Monkey.” I warned him, “Don’t ever let a monkey help you put on a tie. They always mess it up and your tie is going to smell like bananas until it’s dry cleaned.”
That is all.