Review: BumbleBerry Honey Maple Creme

Before I get started on the review, here's a bit about BumbleBerry Farms, from their website:

Here at BumbleBerry Farms, we take our lead from
the bees – one hive can collectively travel as many as 55,000 miles visiting more than two million flowers to
gather the nectar needed for one single pound of our Heritage Select Honey! With that same care and diligence, our honeycomb is hand-spun to gently release the sweet honey we offer up to you – bottled in vintage-inspired, cork-stoppered glass bottles.

We’re a small operation, located in the foothills of Pennsylvania’s Laurel Mountains, and as such, we craft everything ourselves in small batches. We hand-select the ingredients for our delectable honey-based spreads from a dairy farm and a maple sugar camp just down the road. Our skin care products are kept simple, using fair-trade, organic butters whenever we can get them…like our shea butter, which is harvested by women, the sole supporters of their communities in the Burkina Faso region of West Africa.

We are forever grateful to family and friends who have helped us along the way, lending their children for photo shoots, helping us in our festival booths, volunteering as testers for products in the making. With that same nod toward giving others a lift up, we follow their lead and offer
a Honey Bee Good jar of our yummiest nectar with profits benefitting a local charity. Currently we’re supporting Outdoor Odyssey at Roaring Run, a youth mentoring and leadership development program.

We hope you enjoy your BumbleBerry goods and that
you will do as we attempt to do:

Spread a little sweetness on the planet. Bee happy. ^TM

                         .                                                                                                           Sounds great, doesn't it? I have a special place in my heart for bees, and a special place in my stomach for honey. I adore both and am happy to do what I can to help keep bees (and honey) around for years to come, especially in light of the drastically declining number of bee colonies. And supporting charity, of course, is always fantastic.

Which is why it makes me feel a bit down about writing a less-than-stellar review. But, in the interest of providing an unbiased opinion, here we go:

The big, bad problem here was graininess. Why was it grainy? I don't know. What were the grains, anyway? Again, I don't know. They were a tiny bit sweet, but definitely not sugar. Some sort of strange combination of milk proteins and maple syrup crystals, perhaps? If they were properly sweet, like, say, pure maple sugar, I'd probably have just enjoyed it. Graininess itself, while not what I expect in a spread, doesn't inherently bother me. However, these Mystery Grains took ages to melt in my mouth, had no real flavour or sweetness, and were all around more suited for some sort of sticky bath exfoliant than a food item.

Not to be deterred, I decided that despite the lack of sweetness, the Mystery Grains were probably sugar-based in some way - clearly they had crystallized, and could, theoretically, be melted down again. So I tried microwaving some of the spread, in two batches: one, in a quick hot burst, and another over several short bursts, stirring thoroughly in between. Both ended up bubbly and sticky. And both remained as grainy as ever. Now, it's possible that if I scooped the spread out into a saucepan, and simmered and stirred it slowly for an hour or so, that the Mystery Grains would eventually melt down. But in that case, I might as well be making my own, thus removing the main benefit of a prepared spread in the first place.

Then, there was the taste. It was fine, a nice milky caramel sort of flavour. If I'd ordered a plain caramel spread, I'd be delighted. But there was very little, if any, maple taste, which was what I'd been wanting in the first place. Perhaps all the maple flavour was eaten up by the Mystery Grains.

Anyway, thinking that the creme might have been near expiry, I checked the date on the bottom, which said: BEST BY 111315. Originally I'd assumed that it was good until November 13th, 2015. I don't see how it could mean 2013, since the 13 is in the middle, but it seems possible somehow, especially since I ordered it at the beginning of the year and it came from a secondary supplier (Mouth). Who knows how long it's been sitting in a warehouse? Plus, BumbleBerry's website features the creme with a distinctly different label. I don't know. It didn't taste off, but... those damned GRAINS!

I may be making a big deal out of a simple thing. If there's a quick way to fix the weird graininess, let me know, and I'll try it out. If it works, I'll adjust the review accordingly! But until then:

5/10. Decent taste (but a bit bland and not what I expected); texture made unpalatable by millions of Mystery Grains.

If you want to give it a go anyway (I'm so perplexed that I think I might order it directly from the website and see if the new batch is any better) you can buy it from BumbleBerry Farms at $8.50/5oz plus shipping, or from Mouth, as I did originally, at $13/10oz plus shipping.

Spinach Salad with Honey Bacon Dressing

The Salad.

After the heavy dinner we had on Valentine's Day, I decided to make something a litter fresher and lighter the next evening. This is our favourite salad. I adapted the dressing from Alton Brown's Warm Bacon Dressing - I found his version a little to vinegary for me, so I cut the vinegar down a bit and replaced the sugar with a generous dollop of sweet, warming honey.

This recipe feeds two people pretty well all on it's own. With the addition of fresh bread with butter and a side like soup or sliced chicken breast, it could easily be extended to feed four.

The Salad:

- about four loose handfuls' worth of spinach, leaves washed and stems trimmed

- 6 strawberries, sliced (3 strawberries per portion)

- 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced (one egg per portion)

- 6 strips of thick-cut bacon, diced

Nice additions: in the past I've added sliced chicken breast and avocado. Really, with salad, almost anything goes. I imagine toasted almonds would blend nicely with the honey in the dressing.

The Dressing:

- 3 tbsp of warm bacon grease
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2-3 tbsp honey, warmed
- 1/2 tsp dijon mustard
- salt and pepper to taste

The smell of freshly-sliced strawberries is Summer to me.

1. Start frying the bacon. While it fries, slice strawberries and eggs in preparation for salad assembly. Warm
the honey in the microwave (15-20 seconds should do) just before bacon is finished.

2. Once bacon is done, remove with a slotted spoon and place in a paper-towel lined dish. Remove pan from heat and carefully measure out 3 tbsp of the grease. Be sure to scrape up and include as many cracklings as you can - that's where the majority of the flavour is.

Yummy yummy cracklings.

3. In a bowl, combine the bacon grease, vinegar, and mustard. Whisk thoroughly. Whisk in the honey, beginning with 2 tbsp, and adding more until it is to your taste. I usually end up with 3 tbsp, since I like a sweet vinaigrette. Add salt and pepper.

It should look like this. But if it doesn't, don't worry, I'm sure it's still delicious!

4. Assemble salad ingredients however you like, and drizzle the dressing over top. Enjoy!

And in case you weren't hungry yet...

Review: Nicola Valley Honey

I'd been lusting after this honey from the moment I first saw the gorgeous, hand-crafted pots at Hoffstead's about five months ago. Today I finally gave in and bought it (mainly because I had my partner with me to give permission to spend $20 on a little pot of honey).

How did I even resist this long? Just look at this beauty:

According to the tag, the honey pot is "individually hand-crafted on the potter's wheel by master potter Bruce Nyeste at Sorrent, B.C. It has been fired to 1300'C and is non-toxic, oven-proof and dishwasher safe." There were other colours, too - blues and browns mostly, but this one was my favourite.

In addition, this is a local product. The pottery is from Sorrent, and the honey is from an apiary in Merritt, British Columbia, a few hours from where I live in the Fraser Valley. Local, hand-crafted, and gourmet - what's not to love?

To open, the tag instructed me to hold the pot under warm water to soften the wax, then pull the string.

Freshly opened.

I did this, and the entire lid came right up. For some reason I was expecting the string to sort of cut through the wax and open it that way. I don't know if I did it right, but this seems more convenient for re-sealing it anyway, so in the end I prefer it. The lid is completely flat across, and while it fits snugly with the beeswax, I wonder how tight it would be without it. I'm thinking I'll have to keep the wax if I want to store anything edible later.

Yum.

As you can see, the honey had crystallized a bit. The tag advised liquefying it by placing the pot in warm water, but I much prefer creamed honey over liquid, so I just stirred it all in, and if it crystallizes any more, awesome.

After stirring. Hungry yet?

Now, for the real test: the taste.

I happened to still have some of my no-name brand creamed honey to compare it to. The Nicola Valley was tangibly more delicious: a little more sharply sweet, hitting high and hot at the roof of my mouth in that marvelous way that pure honey does. There was the faintest muskiness, as in the scent of roses. It was a bit more complex and flavourful than the ordinary stuff, but still very mild. After the initial tasting, I had it in lemon-ginger tea. It performed as it should, and though the delicate musk disappeared (making it good for cooking, I imagine), I fancied that it still tasted somehow the tiniest bit better than normal.

Was it amazing? No, but it was good. I wouldn't spend $20 on just the honey, but with the hand-crafted pot, I think it's worth the price. It would make an excellent gift for many occasions (especially for oneself), and it looks great on the kitchen table. Would I buy it again? Maybe, but mostly for the pot, or as a gift. For honey, there are too many other varieties to try first.

10/10 for presentation, and 7/10 for taste: 8.5 out of 10.

Note: Nicola Valley Honey does have a website, but it's honestly terrible. If you feel like frustrating yourself, you can find it at:  http://nicolavalleyhoney.com

The gorgeous honey pots are made by Mud Sweat and Tears, and their website, which is perfectly fine, can be found at: http://www.mudsweatandtears.ca.