HONEY, GIVE IT TO ME RAW.

I grew up eating honey from a plastic bear. My mom used to put honey on buttered toast and it was yummy. As I grew older, honey was relegated to sweetening tea. It wasn’t until I met my clients, Royal Hawaiian Honey, that I really discovered how amazing honey could truly be.

RHH is not paying me to write this. It happens that it is the most amazing honey I have ever had. RHH makes three honeys, Organic Lehua, Macadamia Nut Blossom and Organic Christmas Berry. It is not entirely true that they “make” the honey. I would hate to piss off those hard-working bees. The bees make the honey and the folks at RHH, the daughter of the beekeeper and her partner, pack the raw honey in Captain Cook on the Big Island of Hawaii.

WHY I LOVE ROYAL HAWAIIAN HONEY

RAW: Honey, in it’s raw form, comb-to-jar, is packed with wonderful health properties. Most store bought honeys are nice and smooth because they have been pasteurized and stripped of all of their health benefits and essentially reduced to a smooth sugary product. READ MORE

CRYSTALS: Most folks see crystals in a honey jar and think, “ew, the honeys gawn bad!”, but in fact, crystallization is how honey comes in it’s pure and normal form. Honey NEVER goes bad, hence the reason some ancients used it to preserve dead people.

FLAVOR: My favorite of the three honeys is the Organic Lehua honey. It is lightly floral with butterscotch notes. The other two are equally sumblime.

CHEESE? Yes, cheese. I love cheese and I have had honey on cheese plates before, but nothing compares to the way the Lehua Honey tastes with any blue cheese, like a Bleu d’Auvergne or any hard or semi hard sheep’s milk cheese like a Manchego. When any cheese and Lehua honey are in close proximity, I bipass the bread altogether.

You can purchase Royal Hawaiian Honey on their web site as well a learn a whole lot more about bees and honey. During the holidays, many Costco stores carry the 44oz tubs, which are a huge value. I have given jars away to many friends who are instantly converted. I gave a jar to a serious foodie professional that I know and he has since thrown out every other honey that he had in his pantry. A bit extreme, but I get it.

EXPLORE HONEY! There seem to be as many honeys out there as there are flowers. I love RHH honey, but I would not be a good foodie if I advised you to not try honey from other producers. I hear that eating a teaspoon of local raw honey will help with allergies. It kind of makes sense since these honeys will contain the very pollen that makes your nose itch to begin with. The next time you are at your Farmer’s Market, check out the honeys and let me know what you find. I had some white honey in the comb recently that was pretty darn amazing.