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G ). E A N I N G S IN U K K C U 1. T V U K 



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TH E editors 

 have been 

 hinting that 

 another article 

 on honey would 

 be timely; so, if 

 I a ni repeating 

 things which 

 have appeared 

 on this page be- 

 fore, they must shoulder the blame. One of 

 them has been talking about an article on 

 the "Uses of Honey." I ratlior object to 

 tlie plural. In my opinion there is just one 

 use for honey and this is as a food, a deli- 

 cious sweet, the only sweet refined and con- 

 centrated by nature. 



Notice I am not denying that honey can 

 be used in skin creams, etc.; but I believe 

 there are other ingredients which can be 

 used externally to as good advantage, leav- 

 ing honey to its legitimate use as a food. 



Also, please take notice, editors as well as 

 readers, that I have no intention of ever 

 writing about honey as a medicine. Honey 

 is a food, not a drug. If we all paid enough 

 attention to hygienic living, including good 

 food, fresh air, exercise and rest, and sanita- 

 tion, we would require almost no medicine. 



A honey demonstrator, who has worked in 

 cities and towns all thru the eastern part of 

 the country, told me she had more call in the 

 East for honey as a medicine than in any 

 other way. That would be deplorable except 

 for one thing — -there are people who are de- 

 termined to take medicine, and it is better 

 for them to dose themselves with good food, 

 such as honey, than to injure their diges- 

 tions with harmful drugs. 



Now I can just imagine some nice bee- 

 keeper saying, "Mrs. Puerden, you surely 

 must admit that honey is a good remedy for 

 coughs and colds. ' ' Yes, I do admit it, but 

 let us always remember to use the word 

 remedy in that connection and not medicine. 

 There is a difference between the selection 

 of the right foods to cure our bodily ills and 

 taking medicines for the same purpose. 



NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that I 

 am including, with this article, a few 

 recipes for the use of honey, I am not 

 an advocate of the indiscriminate use of 

 honey in cookery. Fine honey, whether in 

 the form of beautiful comb, extracted, or 

 the newer Cream of Honey, is never so fine 

 as in its natural state. The degree of heat 

 necessary to bake a cake injures the flavor 

 and probably the food value of honey to a 

 slight extent. 



Now, after all this negative preface, let 

 nie say a few things about the ideal way to 

 serve honey. The first place I should give 

 to honej' served with good, home-baked 

 V>read, fresh dairy butter, and milk, the 

 bread preferably made of whole-wheat flour. 

 You ])eople who have your "staff of life," 

 tlie modern baker's loaf, shipped into your 

 town from some large baking plant, stale, 

 llavorless, drv, under-baked, really cannot 



OUR FOOD PAGE J 



Stancy Puerden 



r^^^^^^^^ 



471 



appreciate how 

 good bread and 

 li o n e y can be. 

 y i n e honey, 

 served with good 

 bread, is much 

 more satisfying 

 and better rel- 

 ished by the 

 child with nat- 

 ural, unperverted appetite than any cake 

 ever made. 



Here is a remark which I have heard so 

 often that I have come to expect it when 

 we have guests: "Homemade bread is a 

 great treat to us. We like it bettor than 

 cake in our family." And I always feel 

 like replying, "Well, why don't you have it 

 if you appreciate it so much ? " 1 find it far 

 easier to keep home-baked bread on hand 

 than to bake cakes, and until American 

 bakers learn to bake a better article of 

 bread, I shall continue to bake bread for my 

 family. 



There, you think I have wandered far from 

 my subject, don't you? Not a bit of it. I 

 just wished to emphasize the point that 

 honey should be properly accompanied to be 

 appreciated. 



The second place I should give to honey 

 served with hot muflins, hot biscuits, waffles, 

 griddle cakes, etc. An interesting writer 

 on honey, whose name has slipped from my 

 memory, in a recent magazine article states 

 that old beekeepers, who really know honey, 

 never serve it with hot breads. My mother 

 agrees with her, and it was never served 

 with hot foods in our home when I was. a 

 child. The managing editor of Gleanings 

 also says he does not like honey on anything, 

 hot. I can 't help it. Maybe it is a depraved 

 taste, but I like the delicate aroma that 

 arises when honey is poured over hot waf- 

 fles or griddle calces, or when a bit of it is 

 placed on a hot biscuit. Yoii know a great 

 part of the sense of taste lies in the sense 

 of smell, and a little heat, not too much, 

 certainly does increase the fragrance of the 

 honey. 



Before the days of electric irons we used 

 beeswax to prevent the iron from sticking 

 to the starched clothes. A woman who used 

 to do my ironing said she loved the odor 

 that arose when the hot iron was rubbed 

 over the cake of wax. It had much the same 

 aroma that one gets from honey on hot 

 breads. 



Just at this point the beekeeper with 

 whom I have lived for 22 years came along, 

 read jny manuscript, and said, "You are 

 wrong on one point, Stancy, you should give 

 the first place to honey served with hot bis- 

 cuits, etc," and he appealed to our three 

 children who promptly and unanimously 

 agreed with him. It would be interesting to 

 have the opinion of all the readers of 

 Gleanings on the subject. My conclusion is 

 to eat iioney with anything you please, 

 whenever you please, wherever you please, 



