Carrie Schloss - The Asheville Bee Charmer Cookbook: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by 28 Honey Varietals and Blends

Copyright 2017 by Carolyn Dina Schloss

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.

Photography by Angela B. Garbot

Cover illustration by Antonina Sharafutdinova (iStock.com/Nujtmom)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schloss, Carrie, author. | Asheville Bee Charmer, author.

Title: The Asheville Bee Charmer cookbook: sweet and savory recipes inspired by 28 honey varietals and blends / Carrie Schloss; foreword by Jillian Kelly and Kim Allen; photography by Angela B. Garbot.

Description: Chicago: Surrey Books, an Agate imprint, [2017] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017003904 (print) | LCCN 2017008898 (ebook) | ISBN 9781572848016 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cooking (Honey) | Honey. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX767.H7 S34 2017 (print) | LCC TX767.H7 (ebook) | DDC 641.6/8--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003904

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 18 19 20 21

Surrey Books is an imprint of Agate Publishing. Agate books are available in bulk at discount prices. For more information, visit agatepublishing.com.

To my mom, Rosita Schloss, who let me start cooking for our family when I was around ten or eleven years old, has always encouraged me to follow my own path and achieve my dreams no matter where that may lead, and is always an enthusiastic taste tester.

Table of Contents

Contents

A FTER FALLING IN LOVE WITH ASHEVILLE over ten years of frequent visits, we decided it was time to embrace a healthier and slower-paced lifestyle by changing hives and moving to our dream city a few years ago. During the years before our move, we also began changing our diet by choosing farmers markets and organic food over more traditional supermarkets and processed foods. Wanting to replace white refined sugar with something healthier, we began experimenting with a number of alternative sweeteners and found honey to be the natural, clear choice for our kitchen. Learning about different types of honey became a passion for us. And the more we learned about all the natural benefits that honey and bees provide, the more our fascination with bees grew, eventually leading us to take beekeeping classes.

We opened our store in 2014 as a way to connect with the local community and share our passion about honey and bees with our customers. The Asheville Bee Charmer is more than just a honey storeits an experience that hits all your senses the moment you walk into our hive. We create an atmosphere of curiosity that invites our customers to participate and appreciate. Our expert bee-ristas are on hand to make the honey-tasting bar experience a joyful and educational one.

Since our move, we also have become beekeepers. We adopted many beautiful, magical, and amazing bees and searched to find a healthy environment where they could live and thrive. Through connections from our beekeeping club, those locations found us. Our bees reside on a local farm, as well as private land surrounded by tulip poplar, locust trees, and many other pollinator-friendly plants. Both locations provide the four seasons for our honeybees. In addition to our excitement about our honey production, soon after we opened, the buzz was in the air about the local honey store in western North Carolina. Many beekeepers from both our local beekeeping club and beyond Asheville have connected with us over their love of beekeeping. Although we do carry a few select honeys from artisan producers worldwide, the majority of our honey is sourced from small-batch, ethical, regional-based local and artisan honey producers. This gives us the feeling of community that we have been looking for in a smaller town surrounded by mountains and nature. And we actively work on some smaller projects to help raise money for Bee City USA and the Center for Honeybee Research here in Asheville.

Our bees reside on a local farm, as well as private land surrounded by tulip poplar, locust trees, and many other pollinator-friendly plants.

It feels like the pieces to this magical life keep falling into place at the right time, as our business has expanded and grown in a direction we never had dreamed possible. Little did we know that a visit from Carrie would turn into this beautiful project, which she created from her knowledge of cooking with honey and her boundless vision for delicious edible creations. Kim and Carries friendship goes back to their college days and was built upon their mutual love of food and travel. Through the years, we have been to Carries house for dinner many times. We always look forward to those invitations because we have always been impressed with the meals she prepares and the flavor combinations she uses to provide a mouthwatering culinary experience.

Last year, Carrie arrived in Asheville to visit, armed with a list of restaurants she wanted to go to in order to experience Ashevilles unique food culture. She came to the store to taste honey, and while she was at the honey bar, you could already see the wheels turning as to how she would use the different honeys in various dishes. Her refined palate for the variety of flavors was inspiring. Its not every day one gets to sit and taste at least 40 different varieties of honey (we actually did this over a couple of days). Many Asheville food tours stop at the Asheville Bee Charmer. Someone always asks how to use the different types of honey in their cooking. Since we always experiment with honey ourselves, we offer up what we have tried. During her visit, Carrie happened to be tasting honey when one of the food tours stopped by. When the inevitable question arose, she chimed right in and offered up amazing ideas.

Since we opened our store, we have often been asked when we would write a honey cookbook. We didnt think we could write one ourselves, but after seeing Carrie in action at the honey bar, we thought she could bring the project to fruition. Knowing how focused and dedicated she is, we were sure she would create everyday recipes that would be easy and enjoyable to make with clear and straightforward directionsand thats exactly what The Asheville Bee Charmer Cookbook contains. Her use of honey brings a new twist to recipes and adds another level of flavor to food in a unique way. We believe her creative cooking ideas will inspire each reader to experiment with the wide variety of honey flavors available here in the United States and abroad. We hope youll enjoy this journey of honey and cooking as much as we have; we sampled a lot of the recipes in this book! And the next time you pass through Asheville, well have a stool waiting for you at the honey bar.