Posted on 09/24/2013 2:05:20 PM PDT by Excellence
Magnus von Buddenbrock and Stefanie Giesselbach arrived in Chicago in 2006 full of hope. He was 30, she was 28, and they had both won their first overseas assignments at ALW Food Group, a family-owned food-trading company based in Hamburg. Von Buddenbrock had joined ALW—the initials stand for its founder, Alfred L. Wolff—four years earlier after earning a degree in marketing and international business, and he was expert in the buying and selling of gum arabic, a key ingredient in candy and soft drinks. Giesselbach had started at ALW as a 19-year-old apprentice. She worked hard, learned quickly, spoke five languages, and within three years had become the company’s first female product manager. Her specialty was honey. When the two colleagues began their new jobs in a small fourth-floor office a few blocks from Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, ALW’s business was growing, and all they saw was opportunity.
On March 24, 2008, von Buddenbrock came to the office around 8:30 a.m., as usual. He was expecting a quiet day: It was a holiday in Germany, and his bosses there had the day off. Giesselbach was on holiday, too; she had returned to Germany to visit her family and boyfriend. Sometime around 10 a.m., von Buddenbrock heard a commotion in the reception area and went to have a look. A half-dozen armed federal agents, all wearing bulletproof vests, had stormed in. “They made a good show, coming in with full force,” he recalls. “It was pretty scary.”
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I’m eating the last quart jar of honey that I bought on sale back during the 1990s, I guess the new stuff will be pricier.
Honey is almost no different from sugar, except for the bacteria, fungus and plant garbage inside it.
It doesn’t go bad under most conditions of storage because it hasn’t enough water for the bacteria to grow.
Add some water to a petri dish with honey, and watch all the pretty colors of stuff grow. Throw it away without opening.
Excellent point. I had no idea about this honey scam but i try to buy locally produced honey, beer and gasoline. ;o)
An interesting prep would be a bee hive or three out inthe boonies...
Honey can help make up for vital calories in the winter and stores very well not to mention it’s barter value.
Honey is almost no different from sugar, except for the bacteria, fungus and plant garbage inside it.
It doesn’t go bad under most conditions of storage because it hasn’t enough water for the bacteria to grow.
Add some water to a petri dish with honey, and watch all the pretty colors of stuff grow. Throw it away without opening.
Which is why you don’t give it to babies who haven’t gotten all their immune system antibodies from their mommies...
Mama don’t take my Honeycomb away.
Also good for cuts or burns. Honey contains natural enzymes as well as peroxide.
There's also bees wax inside the hives. Bees wax candles don't drip like other candles when they're made right.
I’m a hobby beekeeper, too.
How do you do the creaming process?
I have no problem with the FDA protecting us from adulterated food products, but that’s not what these people were prosecuted for. They were prosecuted by Homeland Security for not paying a punitive tariff on Chinese honey. They broke the law and paid the price, but I don’t think the government ought to be driving consumer prices up by charging punitive tariffs to keep competing commodities out. They do it for other industries, too. Basically picking winners and losers, like they often do with the tax code as well.
“Nothing a little warm water can’t fix. “
True! But 99.99 percent of shoppers will pass it by. If even 15% pass on it it’s a significant cost.
AQ is HUGE in honey markets.
I read the article. It wasn’t just cheap. It was adultered and contaminated. And it was from China, but I repeat myself.
There is a temperature that honey loves to crystallize at. You stir in very small honey crystals to act as a seed (possibly grinding up regular crystallized honey in a mortar) and hold the batch at the right temperature. the combo of the temp and seed crystals assures that the crystals you get will be small and the honey will be creamy.
I add in a little chile powder and a touch of powdered garlic, sometimes.
There are other ways to do it, too.
OBL was a honey merchant and beekeeper, iirc
Seems like real honey, but the pollen was often filtered out to disguise the country of origin (different local flora, different pollen to test for). So, it came from bees, but under the FDA standard in that article, it might not have qualified as “real” honey.
But I repeat myself.
Strange fact - you can reduce the size of the crystals that form in your honey by "inoculating" your batch with a creamed "starter." The honey you have inoculated will reproduce only small crystals (the same size as the starter you put in). Don't know why, but it will. ALL the crystals will form to match what ever you put in.
You need enough starter to equal 1/10th of the honey you wish to cream. Mix it WELL.
If you don't have access to a starter, you can make your own. Grind up some larger crystallized honey in a meat grinder until it's like peanut butter and use that. All your honey will form smaller crystals equal to your ground stuff. Weird, huh?
After you've creamed all your honey, put some aside as a starter for your next batch.
Any questions, FReep mail me. Creaming is really easy, and the honey stays creamed forever.
I know a woman back in the 70s who used to make “Honey” by boiling sugar and water with clover flowers. I think I still have the receipe somewhere. She was an impoverished never left the land type.
They hide opium in the combs.
All wearing bullet proof vests. We all know how dangerous honey bandits can be. Government out of control again. That is the main take away from this story for me.
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