Even if you’re not Jewish, you can start this week with a Rosh Hashanah tradition:

Celebrate the Jewish New Year with a traditional snack of apples and honey. The custom ushers in a sweet new year.

We never thought to dip apples and honey until we were invited to our neighbors’ home one Rosh Hashanah 10 years ago. It’s become a favorite treat.

TIP: Instead of placing the honey into a small dish for dipping, as in the photo, think of hollowing out a large apple and placing it, filled with honey, in the center of a plate of apple slices.

We recently discovered that there’s a special prayer to recite before the honey and apples are consumed. THE NIBBLE doesn’t publish religious content, but we were so charmed by the thought of a prayer of thanks for honey and apples that we couldn’t resist:

Honey and apples are a Rosh Hashanah tradition. Photo courtesy Voices-Magazine.Blogspot.com.

Just in time for fall apple-dipping, Whole Foods Market has introduced 365 Everyday Value Mountain Forest Honey, U.S. Grade A in four varieties:

 
Organic honey is made from the nectar of plants in fields that have not been treated with chemical pesticide. The fields must be pesticide-free for 20 miles in every direction of the beehives.

In addition to organic certification, the honeys are also Whole Trade, a certification similar to Fair Trade. It ensures that the products were produced in a way that ensures fair prices to producers, safe and healthy working conditions for farm workers and environmentally-friendly production. (More about Fair Trade and similar certifying organizations).

RECIPES WITH HONEY

Try honey in these delicious recipes from Whole Foods:

 
MORE BUZZ ABOUT HONEY

Here’s everything you need to know about honey: types, storing and using, pairing, trivia, history, and more recipes.

Have a sweet September.

August 31st is National Trail Mix Day. Make your own blend with the options below.

While the concept of mixing nuts and dried fruit has been popular for millennia, “trail mix” as a concept for a modern, portable energy snack is relatively new.

The term refers to a mixture of high-energy foods such as dried fruit and nuts, combined with other tasty additions. Commonly added ingredients include chocolate morsels or M&Ms, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, and breakfast cereals including granola.

Before the name evolved to trail mix, it was called gorp.

> How to make your own trail mix, below.

> The year’s 90 snack holidays.
 
 
TRAIL MIX HISTORY

According to Wikipedia, two California firms, Hadley Fruit Orchards and Harmony Foods, claim that trail mix was invented in 1968 by two California surfers, who blended peanuts and raisins together for an energy snack.

But in the U.S., the birth of “trail mix” actually happened more than 10 years earlier. Trail mix is mentioned in Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums, when characters plan meals for a hiking trip. To appear in a book published in 1958, it needed to be around a few years earlier. Variations of portable energy food have been carried by mankind since the beginning.

But the concept of gorp is easily earlier than that:

In Europe, the combination of nuts, raisins, and chocolate as a trail snack dates at least to the 1910s, when outdoorsman Horace Kephart recommended it in his popular camping guide. An Oxford English Dictionary listing of 1913 cites Gorp as a term for trail mix often used by hikers, an acronym for “good old raisins and peanuts.” In modern times, some people re-acronym gorp to “granola, oats, raisins, peanuts.”

The combination of nuts, raisins, and chocolate as a trail snack dates at least to the 1910s, when outdoorsman Horace Kephart recommended it in his popular camping guide.

Even earlier than that:

In Denmark, a mix known as studenterhavre (“student oats”) dates to an 1833 citation. Studenterhavre consists mainly of raisins and almonds, but at Christmas, chocolate pieces are added.

Mixes are popular in many other countries as well.

[1] An elegant mix from Vital Choice (photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE).

[2] A popcorn trail mix from Delicious Meets Healthy. Here’s the recipe (photo © Delicious Meets Healthy).

[4] For a party bar, set out the ingredients and let people make their own party favors to go. Be sure to provide snack bags/boxes and Sharpie markers so people can blend and label their own (photo © Walmart).

[5] You can create a trail mix party bar that’s rustic, like this one, or in any other decor (photo © Selena Amelia | Pinterest).

[6] There are many styles of goodie/favor boxes from plain to elaborately decorated (photo © PH Panda Hall | Amazon).

MODERN TRAIL MIX

Trail mix continues to be a popular snack—especially by hikers, campers, and people on the go—because it’s lightweight, easily portable, and requires no refrigeration. It’s a delicious, better-for-you- snack at home, school, work, and in lunch bags everywhere.

Keep experimenting with ingredients and proportions until you have your “signature” trail mix recipe. Then consider it as general gifts and stocking stuffers.
 
 
RECIPE: MIX YOUR OWN TRAIL MIX

 
Keep experimenting with ingredients and proportions until you have your “signature” trail mix recipe. Then consider it as general gifts and stocking stuffers.
 
 
SET UP A TRAIL MIX PARTY BAR

It fits into any gathering where food is casual, interactive, and portable, from kids’ birthdays and game nights to rustic weddings and corporate offsites—and even wine and cheese get-togethers.

Let guests make their own party favors! Set up a table with:

 
 

[7] There are numerous ways to set out a trail mix party bar (photo © Avery).
 
 
 
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

Today is International Bacon Day*, a cause for great celebration among millions of bacon lovers.

If Ford could only sell each one of them its new bacon-wrapped 2014 Ford Fiesta!

Bacon has been a staple of Western cuisine since ancient Roman times. The baconmania of the past five years has produced bacon caramel corn, bacon chocolate bars, bacon chocolate chip cookies, bacon toffee, chocolate-dipped bacon strips, and other tweets.

But this is the first time that it’s being used by car manufacturer. Bacon enthusiasts can have these custom vinyl bacon graphics installed on a new Fiesta. A full “Bacon Wrap” includes 10 giant strips of delicious bacon rolled around the entire Fiesta for a carb-free ride.

The wraps are produced by Ford Custom Graphics, along with 3M Original Wraps, and are available at Ford Custom Graphics. There are other graphics available for other Ford models.

The impressive hummus line from Eat Well Enjoy Life is like a horse of a different color: made not from chickpeas, but from black beans, white beans, red lentils, yellow lentils and edamame.

The result: a whole new way to enjoy hummus. The flavors are exceptional, and the products themselves inspire innovation at home.

Beyond a dip or sandwich spread, think of edamame wasabi hummus blended with mashed potatoes or deviled egg stuffing, spicy red lentil hummus atop crostini and in baked potatoes, black bean hummus in stuffed peppers, white bean hummus on veggie pizzas.

There’s also a line of traditional chickpea-based hummus mixed with Greek yogurt. The result: a milder taste, less fat and fewer calories. The verdict: equally delicious.
The line is cholesterol free, gluten free and certified kosher, and has won Healthy Food Awards in both the Healthy Living and Diabetes Focus categories.
Read the full review.

But is there a difference between raw nuts and roasted (toasted) nuts?

In a recent Science Times Section of The New York Times, C. Claiborne Ray, who writes the Q&A column, quotes Rui Hai Liu, a professor of food science at Cornell University. Dr. Liu has studied the benefits of eating nuts.

“No research has specifically addressed how roasting nuts may change their nutritional value,” said Dr. Liu.

Toasted or untoasted? (photo © Bake Your Day).

Phenolic compounds* in nuts “have high antioxidant activity and are able to quench free radicals that lead to cell damage and oxidative stress,” Dr. Liu said. “Nuts also have a very nice fatty-acid balance and are a good source of vegetable proteins.” And they are linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

We love nuts raw or roasted, but the flavors are distinctively different. For fun, have a snack tasting or cocktail tasting with two different nuts, each served both raw and toasted. We recommend starting with almonds and walnuts for a broad spectrum of flavors. Here’s how to toast nuts.

 
______________________

*Phenols, sometimes called phenolics, are a class of chemical compounds consisting of a hydroxyl group (—OH) bonded directly to an aromatic hydrocarbon group.
 
†Flavonoids, called vitamin P until the early 50s, are the most important plant pigments. The highest-antioxidant foods (blueberries, cherries, pomegranate, etc.) get their deep colors from these antioxidants.