No surprises as to what is making me cross this week. And I’m not surprised to find that much of the cheap honey being sold in supermarkets is not 100% honey. Nor is it 100% Australian product.
Vegans don’t eat honey. I don’t understand this. I do respect those who choose not to eat animals. I’m not so sure about fish, but then my Dad was an enthusiastic angler. I don’t enjoy seeing fish struggle, or removing the hook. Oh alright I’ve never done more than sun myself on the deck!
But when it comes to honey I’m very confused. How can you give up honey? Where are the swarms of bees demanding the return of their stolen honey? Me? I’m keen on bees. I’ve never been stung (oh, here we go) and they don’t bother me, and I don’t bother them when out gardening.
However, honey is a product of living creatures, as are milk and eggs. If we treat these providers well it doesn’t seem unfair. I will never give up eggs. They are an integral part of Jewish cooking and have the status of being neither milk nor meat, they may be freely eaten. Jews will know what I mean, Orthodox Jews are forbidden from eating milk and meat in the same meal. Eggs go both ways. I buy organically produced eggs and hope the chooks are having fun.
So while I have never visited ‘the land of milk and honey’, I am convinced of the sanctity of those foods. I’ll just add bread of course, with apologies to those restricted to the gluten-free kind. These are staple foods we have eaten for millenia.
But honey!! Honey is indeed the nectar of the gods, it is sublime. It is also the only food which never goes bad. It may go hard but can be made runny again. It is a natural sweetener and I don’t know why anyone would want to eat honey that isn’t honey.
I could rant about the damage the demand for cheap food is doing to farmers and to the environment. But you have probably heard it all before. I do understand that we can only eat food we can afford. I believe that most of us do buy the best we can afford.
Good honey can be found everywhere. At the moment I’m eating honey from the hives kept in bushland by a work colleague. Let me know if you would like contact details. I’ve also bought honey from a guy who kept hives about four streets from my house. Okay I do live in the latte-loving Fremantle precinct where I’m privileged to be able to source all manner of local produce. We have an excellent grower’s market nearby where I can get organic meat, bread, eggs and local honey.
I can also carry a basket and pretend I’m in Europe. But chances are that you have a grower’s market nearby. Yes I am a fussy foodista, but buying food from the producer is wonderful. And no local honey producer is going to sell you adulterated rubbish.