Honey: The Perfect Food!

For ages, honey has been considered the “perfect” food. Produced in many parts of the world but especially popular in the Eastern Mediterranean, it has been used as both food and medicine since antiquity.

The Greek thyme honey from Attica, the area around Athens, plus wildflower honeys from the mountains of Crete and the foothills of the Olympus in Thessaly, are considered to be among the tastiest and most aromatic honeys produced since time immemorial. Turkish, Bulgarian, and Lebanese honeys are also thought as top-of-the-line in the rest of the world.

I recently enjoyed three aromatic honeys produced in Wisconsin. The brand is Some Honey Both their orange and wildflower varieties are raw and unfiltered, blond-colored, and not pasteurized. They retain all of their natural nutritional and health benefits.

Raw honey has no additives or preservatives that you may find in other packaged products. It has exceptional preservative qualities on its own. These honeys are unfiltered but strained, which removes unwanted debris like honeycomb wax pieces, bee parts, etc. The pollen is kept in the honey, which is what gives it many of its beneficial properties. 

What was even more interesting was the third variety I received called Cranberry, which is darker, the color of old amber, and as aromatic and tasty as any of the Greek honeys.

Another interesting honey sample I received was from a Chilean company, whose booth I visited at the Summer Fancy Food Show.

It is called ULMO Abeja Dorada miel pura from Colmenares Santa Inés – a family business that provides a raw, monofloral honey from Patagonia known for its antimicrobial properties. It came in a 250-gram jar. It may be on the pricey side, but if the medicinal claims are true, it would certainly be worth it.

The honey is very thick and starting to crystallize, but it’s also very aromatic. When topping strained yogurt, one of my go-to breakfast treats, it’s superb. It’s also a great energy builder, especially desirable as a “morning after” remedy.

You will find flavorful honey produced in some rather unexpected places in the world. On a rooftop terrace 20 stories above Park Avenue in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, some 360,000 bees produce more than 300 pounds of honey annually. This honey finds its way into the Waldorf Astoria’s menus, but is also used in treatments at the hotel’s Guerlain Spa.

And it isn’t only New York City that has a luxury hotel with its own beehives. Québec’s Manoir Hovey is a five-star Relais & Chateaux lakefront luxury property that has a beekeeping program that produces both spring and summer flower honey. The hotel’s chef incorporates the honey into his menus and offers activities centered around honey for interested guests.

The Waldorf Astoria in Amsterdam is another luxury hotel full of sweet surprises. One of them is a couple of beehives in the hotel’s shape in the garden, which is considered the largest private garden in town. The bees provide the honey served every morning as part of an elaborate breakfast and also for sweetening the hotel’s spectacular afternoon tea.

A Colorado Springs’ grand dame, the Broadmoor, has more than 50 beehives at the resort’s Eagles Nest ranch, along with additional hives located at Broadmoor Farms and Golf Course. The bees produce more than 1,500 pounds of honey annually.

The first five-star hotel in Switzerland to maintain a bee colony, Zurich’s Baur au Lac Hotel produces its honey in a hive shaped as a miniature version of the hotel. The small “bee hotel” houses 80,000 honeybees.

Because bees collect nectar and pollen from blossoms within a 3.5-mile radius of their hive, the honey harvested is considered a local Zurich delicacy. This honey is available at the breakfast table, and jars are available to take home at the hotel’s gift shop.

Actually, you can now find honeys at every grocery store and supermarket in practically every city, as well as assorted honeys online. The international honey trade is still as ubiquitous as it was over 6,000 years ago.

What’s your favorite brand of honey, and how do you like to use it?