Honey, I'm home!

I'm getting ready for a big road race and decided to cut out gluten and refined sugar for about a month leading up to the race. The toughest part of cutting out gluten is eliminating the glorious crusty, sourdough bread at Hungry Ghost Bread in downtown Northampton.

And, the biggest challenge when eliminating refined sugar is leaving it out of my morning coffee. I pondered a few possibilities for sweeteners and decided that I would give honey a try for a coffee sweetener. And, the honey I chose for the experiment was Red Barn Honey Company summer honey. This honey is local to Northampton. In fact, Richard, the owner, is our neighbor, so we can just stop on by whenever we need a honey refill.

I'm pleased to report that honey coffee is delicious-better than coffee with sugar. Blue started using honey and loves it too. I wondered, is this a THING? Yes, it turns out that other folks have been recognizing the benefits of honey as a coffee sweetener. Here is an article from the Examiner about the benefits of honey in your coffee. For starters, honey is an immune system booster.

There was one other food that I was woefully missing and that's Nước chấm sauce. This sauce is an essential ingredient in Vietnamese cooking and I have been on a bit of Vietnamese food kick as of late. Nước chấm sauce includes a good amount of sugar to counter-balance the fish sauce flavor. Well, I used honey to replace the sugar and it was at least as good as the original traditional recipe. Also, when you cook Nước chấm on the stove, you have to ensure the sauce reaches a temperature to melt the sugar. That worry was gone using honey.

 Vietnamese Rice over Greens with Honey Nước chấm

I shared my idea of using honey for Nước chấm with celebrated cookbook author Andrea Nguyen, and she kindly shared it with her Viet World Kitchen community. She's such a doll! And, her Vietnamese cookbooks are gorgeous and full of interesting information about Vietnamese food and culture. 

I'm looking forward to using honey as a substitute in baking recipes as well. And, I love the idea of using a locally sourced and thus more sustainable option for my sweetening needs. Perhaps you would be interested in this blog post from The Food Network on ways to use honey in cooking.