This fun and tidy way to serve honey dispenses single servings to anyone who wants some in their tea, on biscuits, on pancakes and so forth.

Honey also dissolves more readily than sugar in cold drinks such as iced tea and lemonade.

Oregon’s Nature’s Kick Honeystix makes honey sticks in a nice selection of varietal honeys: blueberry blossom, buckwheat, fireweed, meadowfoam, orange blossom, pumpkin blossom, raspberry blossom, white sage and wildflower.

There are also flavored honey sticks: cinnamon, lemon, lime and mint.

Each straw contains about 2/3 teaspoon honey: enough for one six-ounce cup of tea (excluding the milk).

A natural product loaded with beneficial vitamins, minerals, amino acids and antioxidants, honey in stick form can also serve as a nutritious, on-the-go energy snack.

 
FATHER’S DAY HONEY GIFT IDEA
Take a look at these gift crates with three different flavors of spreadable cream honeys:

A Fenway Park tin filled with yummy
baseball shortbread. Photo courtesy
Cooperstown Cookie Co.

The rich, traditional shortbread cookies are handmade in the regulation size and shape of baseballs (3″ diameter). Fresh, light and fragrant with butter, they melt in your mouth.

The cookies are all natural with no preservatives or additives—just flour, butter, sugar, pure vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.

Unlike some shortbread recipes that can be a bit al dente, you can give a tin of these to Grandpa (or a kid with braces) without worrying about damage to the dental work.

Each tin—available with the logo of any Major League Baseball team—includes a tricky baseball trivia question. This gift will make the day of a baseball nut; and anyone who loves good shortbread will be thankful that proprietor Pati Drumm Grady put her family shortbread recipe to such good use.

“Julep” is a Middle English term for a sweet drink, derived sometime between 1350 and 1400 C.E. from the Arabic gulab (pronounced julab), which refers to rose petals steeped in water.

The mint julep originated in the American South in the 18th century, where it was made with bourbon or with genever (aged gin). The gentry served their mint juleps in silver or pewter cups, but a tall glass does just fine.

Today the gin has disappeared as an option. The ingredients of a mint julep are bourbon, mint, sugar and crushed or shaved ice—similar to a Mojito, which uses rum instead of bourbon.

Here are two recipes for mint juleps.

If you don’t like bourbon or want a change, here’s a variation of the mint julep from New York City’s 21 Club, called the South Side Cocktail. It uses a white spirit (gin, tequila, vodka, white rum) plus the addition of lemon juice.
 
SOUTH SIDE COCKTAIL RECIPE

Ingredients For 1 Drink

1. Place all ingredients in a shaker, and shake vigorously to bruise mint leaves.

2. Strain into a chilled collins glass filled with ice.

As today is also Memorial Day, we toast to all who have fallen while, defending our country.

MINT JULEP HISTORY