My grandfather was a commercial honey producer. He sold it by the barrel for cough medicine in the 40’s & 50’s. He didn’t sell his hives and equipment until the mid 60’s.
I grew up eating raw honey. Honeycomb was like chewing gum to me.
I still prefer raw honey, but will eat pasteurized honey too. I found a quart bottle of raw honey at Sam’s Club a few months ago. My favorite evening desert is two slices of buttered toast with honey.
I use it to sweeten oatmeal and cream of wheat cereal for breakfast.
Despite getting my first hive in elementary school, I don’t consume much. Usually in tea, which I don’t usually sweeten, and which I don’t drink often.
But when I have an upper respiratory infection, it feels good.
I have one to two cups of tea a day, usually with a spoonful in each (unless it’s mint tea; mint and honey just don’t work together). I’d say that probably counts as “often”.
I love the taste of honey but I’m such a sloppy eater I can’t eat it without getting something sticky I’d rather not be. So, make it “occasionally.”
I read of a study by the Honey Producers Association or whatever it’s called where research was done about substituting honey for sugar in baked goods. When honey was used 100% cakes and such came out wonderfully moist and had a delicious flavor – not that they’d be prejudiced about that. The problem is, honey’s acidic and too much acid interferes with rising, whether yeast or baking powder. Furthermore, how acidic a batch is varies. In their labs they could measure the amount acidity and add the proper amount to alkali to counter it, a technique not available in your usual home kitchen.
After further research, they determined that the honey could substitute up to 25% without causing problems.
Last time I had honey was a few years ago. We bought some lavender-flavoured honey from a lavender farm. It was quite nice on toast. But in general my feeling is that having honey on toast is like having brown sugar on toast – it’s basically just a way to get sugar into my body (which I probably don’t need more of).
I love honey but hardly ever use it. I have 3 or 4 jars of different varieties that I’ve accumulated, more than I’ll ever use up in my lifetime. The jars always crystallize. I heat it up to liquify it, and then by the time I use it again, it’s already re-crystallized. I’ll probably leave them to my children in my will.
I really like honey but I chose rarely. I tend to buy a small jar because of a recipe or something, but then it tends to get forgotten. It just doesn’t seem to be something in my normal rotation and I often end up tossing out a crystallized jar.
But, thanks to this thread… I baked biscuits this morning for biscuits and gravy, and had some left over. I just reheated one, added some butter and found some local clover honey that I bought a few weeks ago. A very nice snack.
I like it very much in tea, but I rarely drink tea (usually only when I am sick). Sometimes I’ll make sun tea in the summer, though, and will add it to that when I make it. I also have a few desserts and breads I make that call for it. Back when I did home brewing, I’d make mead, which of course uses quite a lot. It was fun to experiment with the different types of honey available. I found that tupelo honey worked quite well and I also made a small batch with Tasmanian leatherwood honey that was interesting. Orange blossom honey is very nice as well. These days my only honey source is my neighbor, who has hives. I’ve wondered with the recent boom in non-rural people keeping hives if there should be a new category of honey - ‘wildflower + (sub) urban plantings’?
I didn’t participate in the poll because I drink honey more than I ever eat it. I love drinking mead (sometimes spelled meade) and have enjoyed making it on occasion as well. Finally a meadery opened not too far from where I am located - hoping this becomes “a thing” in the same vein as the craft beer industry.