Blog
> Eat the Press February 22 2014
We love the emphasis magazines and boutiques are placing on food now.
Small-batch offerings, with an emphasis on knowing where your food is grown or made, are all the rage, and we're tickled to be featured in two lifestyle magazines right now.
The March 2014 issue of Southern Living is a double-whammy of attention for us. Our creamed Tennessee Snow honey is on page 95 with a big feature about cooking with honey. The SL website fleshes out the piece with an article "We're Sweet on Southern Honey" that profiles our creamed honey and our 2013 Tennessee Spring vintage.
In addition, our Summer Wildflower honey appears on page TN8 (between pages 61 and 62 — it's like the Harry Potter train platform 9 3/4 that only Tennesseans can see). We're there with a full-page feature on Batch, a subscription box company based in Nashville that was kind enough to include our honey in its debut "Rise and Shine" box.
We're also thrilled to be on the ingredients list of our friend (and owner of Piebox) Adrienne Blumthal's latest pie recipe on MarthaStewart.com. She makes a good point, that honey is a good substitute for fruit during the bleak winter months.
After all, honey is the concentration of nectar from thousands of flowers and plants. Her Honey Goat's Milk Pie recipe might just tied us over until spring.
> Look around, Dixieland. January 27 2012
That's right.
According to Bon Appétit magazine, the South — and its culture of no-holds-barred, we're-not-afraid-of-you food — is hot. If you want fearless, experimental flavor with sentimental devotion to real, tangible ingredients, this is the place to be.
The February issue of Bon Appétit fearlessly takes on the South, in all its bigness, leading the cover with nothing less (or more?) than fried chicken.
In the "New Southern Pantry" feature, what the foods have in common is that they are traditional southern favorites which come from the earth, like pecans, peanuts, cucumbers and sweet potatoes, but with a twist: hell-fire and spice in the pickles and jelly, chili in the chocolate, sweet potatoes turned to hot sauce. Taste, taste, taste!
What's wildflower honey?
While TruBee Honey is thrilled to be on the shelf with these products, we don't feel as innovative. In fact, some might think us simple because we don't haul our hives around on trailers to collect high-dollar nectar from orange, tupelo and sourwood trees.
But, sometimes, simple is good. Traditional, even. Our bees enjoy nectar from indigenous southern plants — like passionflower and those pesky, pokey blackberry brambles creepin' on everybody's fences.
We don't dictate the diet of our "free-range" bees, and our honey changes every season because of it.
Bon Appétit described our honey as "nuanced," because it always changes. We'll see that and raise it: our raw wildflower honey is so unique, so special, that each distinct vintage is a flavor never to be repeated in Nature again.
Come to think of it, that's what Bon Appétit is getting at. Delicious, hip, of-the-moment flavors, but with old-school ingredients — that's what today's southern foods are all about.