Our Top 5 Best Ways to Eat Honey

What's your favorite way to eat honey? I thought it might be fun to show some of our favorite ways we partake of honey in this house. There are times when we can easily go through a pound of honey a week. Many of our customers buy a little 8 ounce honey and say, "Oh, this will last me a couple months." What?!? Some people need some creativity when it comes to honey consumption! Here are some great ways enjoy Honeyrun Farm Honey:

1. Let's not overlook the obvious. The all-around favorite: Peanut Butter and Honey - on toast. Yes, toast makes it so much better, with the warm peanut butter and the honey oozing through the whole sandwich... need I say more?

2. On a spoon, sprinkled with some bee pollen. This is our version of a daily multivitamin. Our children, (Mason and Maizy, 2 1/2 and 15 months old) love bee pollen. They eat it plain off a spoon and say, "Num num!" And then they come running back for more. Imagine how much tastier it is when you mix it with honey! We love when the honey is just beginning to granulate, like this Black Locust honey. It is so smooth and creamy, it just melts on your tongue.

3. On cornbread. Yesterday I made a homeade cornbread with real sweet corn in it, using Alton Brown's recipe from the food network. Delicious. Smother it with our fall honey and you won't regret it.

4. Graham cracker/honey milk dipper. This is Isaac's invention, and it has become our favorite afternoon snack. Take two graham crackers, smother with honey. Sandwich them together. Dip in milk until they just start to get soggy. Enjoy. Seriously... this is one of the BEST ways to eat honey. I made homeade graham crackers today using this recipe (I love Alton Brown's recipes).

5. In Hot Cocoa. A few mornings each week I make myself homeade cocoa with honey. Fill a pan with 12 ounces or so of milk (Snowville is my preference!). Add 2 spoonfuls Equal Exchange Drinking Cocoa. Whisk together when warm. Add 1 TB summer honey. Add whipped cream if you're feeling decadent.

Please share some of your favorite ways to eat honey in the comments sections! Or email me your great recipe and I'll post it.

This Saturday is our last Saturday at the North Market, by the way... time to stock up for winter! We will be bringing 5 lb. jugs and even a few gallons for those serious honey lovers out there.

Our Honey is now available for purchase through Foodzie!

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with the online marketplace Foodzie! You can visit our online store at www.honeyrunfarm.foodzie.com. We are currently selling our Summer Honey, Lavender Infused Honey, and Chunk Honey through their website, and hope to add more varieties later. Go check it out!

Appalachian Mountain Artisans Fest - Oct 8-10

Come join us this weekend for the Appalachian Mountain Artisans Fest in Winchester, Ohio. Activities include:

Artisan Booths
Sunflower & Pumpkin Patches
Hay “Swimming Pool”
Corn Maze
Antique Tractor Show
Face Painting
Classes & Demonstrations
Live Entertainment
Charity Auction

Check out their facebook page here. And a schedule of events here. Pictured below are just a few of the items we will be bringing with us to sell this year!

Creations from the farm...

Something new we tried this year at Honeyrun Farm: Hot Pepper Ristras! Very easy to make if you have the time and patience. I am not going to attempt to provide directions here, but feel free to email me if you want to know how I did it. These can be hung in your kitchen to allow the peppers to dry - ready for use all winter long.Pictured below are Joe's Long Cayenne peppers. These dry best of all 10 varieties of peppers I grew this year.
There is still time to harvest more peppers before the final frost here in Ohio. Send me a message if you want us to bring any to the farmer's market. We'll be at the North Market Oct. 16th, 23rd, and 30th.

How to cook a pumpkin (or squash).

Some of you out there will look at this post and think, "duh... it's not rocket science." But many people really have no clue what to do with a freshly harvested pumpkin... other than carve a face in it and place a candle inside on Halloween. This year, I grew an abundance of pumpkins and winter squash, and have already sold most of the heirloom varieties at the market. Most customers were buying them for decorations - but I made sure to tell them that they shouldn't just throw it out when they were done. Bake it! Make a pie, some pumpkin soup, pumpkin bars, pumpkin roll... the list goes on (and if you don't believe me, just come to the Circleville Pumpkin Show Oct 20-23... you will see the many amazing uses of pumpkin).

So here is a little post to educate you on how to bake a pumpkin or squash. I used the "Speckled Hound" pumpkins which grew beautifully this year. They are prized for their buttery yellow flesh. I made a delicious pumpkin/sweet potato soup with this. Too bad I can't provide the recipe here because... well... I didn't use one. But it was delicious, and there are many recipes out there to try. I recommend using sweet potato rather than sugar... it's all the sweetness a good pumpkin soup needs! Another side note about these "Speckled Hound" pumpkins: They were the secret ingredient in the Ohio Local Foods Week Iron Chef competition on Sunday night! I guess you could say I am a bit proud.

First step: Chop the pumpkin in half. Yes, I said Chop. Slice. Carve. Whatever method you like.
Second step: Use a large spoon to scoop out the seed and rind. If using an heirloom... save the seeds to plant next year!
Third step: Place the pumpkin or squash in a baking dish filled with about a half inch of water.
Fourth Step: Bake in a 350 degree oven until the flesh becomes soft and squishy. This pumpkin took about 40 minutes. Just open the oven every now and then and prick it with a fork to test it. You can also prick it (like you would a potato) to allow it to cook it more quickly and evenly. Don't take it out of the oven until it is soft all the way through. It is now time to scoop out the flesh, leaving the shell behind.
The next step is to take this pumpkin flesh and puree it in your food processor. You will probably need to add a little milk or water to get a nice smooth consistency. Since I made soup, I made mine pretty fine textured. If you're cooking a pie, you might want to leave it a bit more stiff, like canned pumpkin you would buy in the store. As you can see the light yellow color of the Speckled Hound is quite different from many darker red pumpkins.
Final Step: Take the pumpkin skin and rind out to the chickens (or your compost bin if chickens are unavailable). And there you have it! You have cooked your very own pumpkin! Much more rewarding than using canned pumpkin from the store. And besides... wasn't there a huge canned pumpkin shortage this year?
Come on down to the farm and pick out a pumpkin to cook up. You can even bring your rinds to our chickens when you're all done.