Gift-giving has become increasingly popular on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and the lead item is honey, not only those ubiquitous cute honey bear bottles, but more sophisticated and gourmet options.
Good kosher wines are also a common staple in the ever-expanding holiday gift baskets. HoneyRun Winerybased in Chico, CA, produces a sophisticated non-sulfited wine from fruit and honey, and is kosher-certified by the OU. Honeywine flavors include blackberry, cranberry, elderberry, cherry, and dry mead.
Savannah Bee CompanyGrill Honey is a wonderful present for any chef, from the amateur or professional. Formulated specifically to bring a distinctive honey flavor to be a perfect pairing to grilled foods, this honey can serve as a marinade, basting or brush-on condiment to grilled veggies, meat, and fish to add a crisp caramelizing factor and honey flavor to barbecue favorites. The product, hand-harvested at the peak of honey season, is KSA kosher certified.
Sandt’s pure buckwheat honey, Grade A natural and unfiltered, is another option. More full-bodied and dark than typical mass-produced grocery store honeys, buckwheat honey is richer in iron and several antioxidant compounds than its lighter and mass-produced counterparts. Buckwheat is the strongest and darkest of all honey varieties.
WeeBee Honey, produced on a small family farm split between New York and Florida, is an unadulterated and 100 percent natural raw version of honey that results in a nutritionally beneficial product, rather than a mere sweetener. WeeBee uses bees located strictly in wild locations in both states, thus producing a wildflower honey coming from wild plants, trees and grasses.
`Since it is unfiltered and unstrained, the honey retains all the beneficial properties that are often missing from conventional honeys, such as pollen, propolis, and honeycomb. The crop is tested every year for pesticides with a USDA lab, ensuring a pesticide-free product. WeeBee Honey is certified kosher by the OU.
Other honey-related gifts for the yomim tovim include a large selection from innovative candy purveyors Oh, Nuts, and include a honey-filled candlestick, violin or guitar-shaped honey bottles for music lovers, Jelly Belly honey beans in an adorable honeycomb-shaped jar, and baked goods like teiglach (small pastries boiled in a honey syrup) and honey cake.
(KosherToday)
