Not much bee news, but I cooked with honey

The bees were flying at all four hives today, but nothing remarkable or particularly interesting to report, so I decided to cook with honey instead and report to you about that adventure. Even after giving away honey to everyone I know, I still have enough left to use in cooking this year.


I'm going to try more honey based dishes or at least dishes with honey in them. This week it was Apricot Carrots from an about.com page on recipes with honey. Here's the recipe:

2 T butter
6 carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1 tsp honey
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 green onions, sliced very thin
salt and pepper

Saute the carrots in butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat for 3 minutes. Add broth, apricots, honey, balsamic vinegar and cinnamon to the carrots. Cover and simmer 4 minutes. Add green onions, re-cover, and simmer an additional 1 - 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

It was good, but if I were to make it again, I'd use a tablespoon of honey rather than a teaspoon, and I'd leave out the green onions. I couldn't tell that they added a thing and I missed enough honey to glaze the carrots. I used organic carrots and six of them sliced was a lot of carrots. Perhaps if I had used insipid ordinary carrots, I would have recognized the honey in the dish more!

PS if you're curious, the whole dinner was from Real Simple - Pork chops with escarole and onions cooked in balsamic vinegar. I thought the carrots would round the meal out pretty well.