Honey Is For Everything!!!

By Ron Aiken

That headline deserves three exclamation points, I don’t care what you say. Probably deserves more, but you and I can talk about that later. Right now, we’re talking honey, which is THE BEST NATURAL SWEET THING IN THE WORLD.

Chomp! is all about being an active locavorian (it’s a word, look it up #don’tlookitup) as well as a believer in all things natural as opposed to those produced unnaturally in laboratories with unpronounceable names made by people in white coats with no social lives. This is a good rule to follow in general, if you want to write that down.

Honey cures everything from a sweet tooth to the common cold. And yes, yes it does cure the common cold IF you take a spoonful of honey a day from as close to your local environment as possible, because this will effectively vaccinate you against all the local pollen that may be irritating your passageways. It’s a proven wonder for coughs, and has been shown to shorten colds by two days according to a study by Jahrom Unviersity of Medical Science in Iran. I did not make that up.

But how do you find honey that’s local to where you are? Chomp! is SO glad you asked! Thankfully the South Carolina Department of Agriculture has a website you can use (http://www.certifiedscgrown.com/) to search BY COUNTY!

For Chomp!’s wedding in May, we decided as a gift to wedding-goers we’d give them local honey from my childhood home of Irmo. Using that site I found Carolina Haven, LLC, and beekeeper Richard Schuelke. How local was he? His hives are about four houses down from the home I grew up in. His bees gather the pollen from the trees and flowers of the woods and backyards Chomp! grew up around. How amazing is that? Here’s a picture of the honey with the amazing labels my wife made:

Pretty sweet, eh? And so, so good!

If you happen to live outside S.C. (or inside, or just want to find some local honey for someone somewhere else) there’s a website called localhoneysource.com that puts you right in touch with local beekepers that’s very helpful.

In Chomp!’s home, we use honey on everything. Ice cream. Steaks (great binding agent for herbs and makes a great crust). Cake. Pie. Ginger snaps. Salmon. Coffee. Chicken. Tea. You name it, we put honey on it and our lives are immeasurably better because of it.

Here’s a sampling of the honey selection in our house AT THIS VERY MOMENT.

I encourage you to make local honey a part of your everyday life. Before bed, it’s a great way to satisfy a craving for sweets that some of us get, and you can take a teaspoon knowing you’re doing your body right instead of just mindlessly choking down a bowl of freezer-burnt ice cream (though honey improves, that, too J

Until next time!

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