Sweet honey

As I swing into a new year, I start to look for ways to unclutter my life. The weather helps by keeping me inside most of the time. With a stinging wind and hills of snow to trudge through, I’m glad to get back into a warm house. Spending time indoors means I’m surrounded by things and since it is a new year, it’s time to pare those things down. First, it’s time to take the Christmas tree down and accompanying greens. We always keep these trimmings up one week too long! So we get to take them ourselves to the Enviro center for recycling. Then it’s time to reorganize our living space, find places for newly received gifts and decide what will have to go. I try to stick with the useful: what works well and does a good job. But sometimes I just keep it because it brings beauty! There’s something cathartic in letting go of those things you just don’t really need.
After the holidays, a coworker brought me the perfect gift, something useful and beautiful: a handmade ceramic honey pot with its own little honey swirler. When I think of items that truly serve a purpose, this would be one. It’s only made for honey and it works perfectly. You lift the lid off the jar to fill it--no screwing or popping required. The opening is wide enough to nicely fill it with those golden ribbons of honey, and the server is the best way I know to get honey out of a jar without making a sticky mess. You twirl the honey on it and then twirl it off into your cup of tea or your buttered bread. And to top it off, it was made by a local potter who earns her living making pots.
Honey is one of those ingredients that I always keep in my pantry. It makes its way into all types of cooking and baking. I use it in my whole wheat honey bread and my granola. It flavors a chicken curry that I bake in the oven or a lentil casserole. It sweetens salad dressings or butternut squash. From morning to night, from oven to fridge, from baked item to raw, honey just adds a little bit of goodness to food. I call it liquid gold because there is nothing as rich as honey as it swirls out of a jar in a smooth ribbon of sunshine.
As a matter of fact, honey also has uses outside of the kitchen. If you’re looking for a natural way to cleanse and tighten your facial skin, you guessed it: honey. Spread a thin layer on your face. Let sit for ten minutes, licking what might want to drip off. Then rinse off gently with warm water.
But back to food, when my daughters were young, we often used honey in a quick energy snack that tasted good and was healthy. These days, when I get the urge for a buckeye (like the ones they sometimes make at the Electric Brew), I go to the pantry and look for rolled oats, powdered milk, honey and peanut butter (the natural kind, from a small company, that hasn’t been affected by the recall!!), and mix up a concoction that I shape into balls. And there you have them, honey milk balls. Easy to make and even easier to snack on! And they go very well with hot tea.
Here is the recipe:
1 c. rolled oats
1 c. milk powder
1/2 c. peanut butter
1/2 c. honey
Mix all together and knead until smooth. Shape into balls the size of walnuts. Eat as needed.