Starting a sweet new year — without ‘honey’

Two years ago I said enough was enough. My son had just taken a kilo of honey off the kitchen table, waved it around to show his siblings. Then he discovered that the lid was open.

I arrived downstairs to see a golden oil slick dripping from the sleeves of his brand new suit and rapidly covering my kitchen floor. 

No more honey.

Last year, I promised no more sticky fingers, grimy faces and lethal floors. No more dripping, oozing surprises 20 minutes before my guests were due to arrive. 

My decree was met with a remarkable lack of resistance. My kids never ate the apple anyway. My husband held the honey spoon like a radioactive transmitter to avoid getting his fingers dirty. And my father in law is diabetic.

But I still wanted a sweet year. And something to show that this meal wasn’t just another family dinner party. So I set out to find some new alternatives to honey.

Living in Israel I figured there had to be plenty of alternatives. After all this is the land of milk and honey. I remembered learning in school that the “honey” referred to in the Torah is not actually the product of bees that we think of us honey. It really refers to date honey. Date honey, otherwise known as Silan is widely available and quite delicious. If you’re looking for Israeli Silan, then Galil Silan is available online with international shipping at galilco.com. But Silan is much too much like bee honey for my purposes.

Dates on the other hand are sticky without being drippy. I decided that we could manage a little bit of stickiness. Israel hosts some marvelous date farms. The big fat Medjool dates are my family’s favorites. I cut then open to remove the pit and arranged the artfully on a plate, ignoring the child who found it necessary to say they looked like beetles.

That same child ate five before we took the plate away.

We got ours from the local supermarket (perks of living in Israel) but the Lior brand sells a range of sizes via Amazon, including a handy eight-pack of individual date cups so everyone can have their own.