Honey, Anyone?

apart from being addicted to mandy rice, mr khairul and i also discovered another addiction - a must-have breakfast - toasted waffle with butter and...honey! the tasty pleasant-smelling sticky syrup intertwined with the salty juicy butter, melting over a hot piece of waffle - freaking good morning!

so when we went to dubai global village yesterday, it was just as nice to find Yemeni Honey - said the be one of the best produced honey in the world. beekeeping is deep-rooted throughout Yemen's history. it survived through time like an inheritance. beekeeper takes bee business seriously over there! mr. khairul took his mom and sis to experience it. they loved the place too. read my first dubai global village visit here.

a taste of yemeni honey

the yemen dude lets us try all sorts of honey - just like trying out ice-cream flavors at baskin robins before you finally decided on one. he even dipped one in the 'honey for kids', and casually placed it gently upon kahfi's lips! as a mom i was like 'what the..!" but kahfi seemed indifferent and just wiggled in my mom-in-law's arms. apparently you can feed honey to little babies. huh.

i tried the one for 'mothers after giving birth' and it tasted heavenly. like jam. like candy. like melted ice-cream. like sugary sweet but not sickeningly. i like!

the sight of the gooey yummy honey was so intoxicating, as he poured the honey so expertly into the jars

'the whole of Yemen is a land of honey'.

~ egyptian historian al-Maqrizi (d.1441),
author of one of the few Arabic treatises on beekeeping

made in yemen
honey made in yemen is raw and pure - the method of beekeeping is traditional. no chemicals or drugs allowed. no machinery used - all are done using their hands, a little smoke (from dried camel skins) and knives. the honey is then poured, unheated and raw, into containers, thus preserving its vital live enzymatic constituents.


honey is good

• honey differs in their content, thus has different benefits
  
• which flower the bees took the pollen from, the climate when the honey is being harvested and soil are all key factors in determining its flavor, colour or aroma and its quality
  
• we can follow the sunah of the Prophet (SAW) who had spoonful of honey in the morning diluted in water, three times a month, said to avoid catching serious diseases.
• yemeni tradition prescribes honey together with melted butter for consumption by mothers immediately after childbirth.

honey kept in plastic containers, with assortment of labels from 'for children', 'only for married' to 'diabetic patient'

Sidr honey of yemen
mr. khairul finally settled on the sidr honey for himself; a thick gooey dark-colored honey. said the be the most highly esteemed of all honey for it is the most expensive in the world, being harvested only twice a year. the honey is from bees who feast ONLY on the pollen of the Sidr tree - considered many to be a holy tree.

and i just found out that bees of a certain hive make 37,000 trips just to make half a kilo of honey (daymn!) but bees fed solely on the nectar of the Sidr flower die after making about 3 trips! the weaker bees cannot withstand the potency of the nectar of this remarkable tree.

gee. sorry barry benson!

the sidr tree

introducing the Sidr tree

• the Sidr tree is an ancient tree.
• the Jujube fruit was the first thing Prophet Adam (pbuh) ate when he was made to descend to earth.
• the tree was used during the time of King Suleiman (pbuh) and the Pharaohs to build palaces and temples.
• this tree is also mentioned four times in the Qur'an; one of it 'as a paradise tree (Sidrat al-Muntaha).
• Allah has mentioned this tree to emphasize its beauty, strength and grandeur (surah Saba 15,16; Waqia 27-33; Najm 7-18).
• it is a sturdy and deep-rooted tree which has withstood the devastating floods of Eram at Ma'arib (surah Saba 15,16).
• all of its parts have medicinal values.

what we finally bought

we bought 3 of the smallest jar - we want to give it a try first - and i labelled them once home. for 'bapak', for 'mak' and for 'khaleef & kahfi'. i feel like i'm the mama bear in 'goldilocks and the three bears'! and it's honey! talk about irony. yum yummy yemeni honey for breakfast now!

oh, did i mention that honey is also an excellent aphrodisiac?

>wink wink<