honey!

A few weeks ago we went to the local farmer's market and I was looking in particular for more honey varieties. I picked up these three:

The first jar is honey from a local farm, not a monofloral one but it has its own rich flavor. The mesquite honey, which my daughter calls "desert honey" tastes bright. I don't know how else to describe it. And the last one, a local wildflower honey, has the sharp sweet flavor I recall from another wildflower jar.

They are all amber colored, with the first, "farm orchard" honey being darkest. The summer wildflower honey is the palest in color.

I was particularly tickled to discover that the supermarket close to my new apartment actually stocks local and monofloral honeys. I haven't seen my favorite starthistle honey there yet but they do have buckwheat, tupelo, orange blossom, a few of specific blends from local farms, and several varieties I haven't tried yet- sage and alfalfa in particular. But my daughter begged me to get a jar with actual honeycomb in it (not pictured) so I haven't bought any other monofloral flavors yet. At six to eight dollars a jar it's something I feel is a splurge, and with four "special honey" jars in the cupboard right now it might be several weeks before I bring more home.

I must start trying to use them in my cooking. Thinking about getting the honey book from the library again to read her list of recommended food pairings and try some new things in the kitchen...

As an amusing aside, my daughter was speculating the other day about keeping chickens on our balcony. When I explained why that isn't practical she suddenly got the idea of keeping a beehive there and getting our own honey from it. It's a fantastic idea with two major problems: I don't know if the management would allow it, or the neighbors appreciate it (if they even noticed) and I recall from reading a book how heavy and noisy a honey-extractor can be - I think it was Farm City. Plus not sure if I'd be brave enough to handle bees, even though I've dreamed about it for a few years now. So I don't think I'm really going to put a beehive on my balcony, but I was pleased that my daughter looks at my little gardening operation here and tries to think of other ways we can produce our own food even though we're in an apartment.