Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich

Appalachian mountain families who kept beehives — and many did, pollinating their apple and buckwheat crops — had access to raw, unfiltered honey with complex flavors from wildflowers, sourwood, and tulip poplar. Combined with natural peanut butter on homemade bread, this was considered a treat lunch. Sourwood honey from Appalachia is still considered among the finest honey produced anywhere in America.

Ingredients

• Natural peanut butter

Thick-sliced bread

• Raw local honey (sourwood honey if available — the Appalachian variety)

Directions

1. Spread peanut butter generously on one or both slices of bread.
2. Drizzle raw honey over the peanut butter — be generous.
3. Close sandwich. The honey will slowly seep into the peanut butter during the morning.
4. By lunchtime, the combination creates a complex sweet-savory-nutty flavor throughout.

No additional ingredients needed.

1. For the classic mountain version: use the honey straight from the comb, pressing the wax comb right onto the bread so the honey seeps out while eating — then chew the wax comb afterward.

Notes

Sourwood honey — named for the Appalachian sourwood tree that blooms in July — has a distinct light amber color and a rich, slightly spicy flavor unlike any other honey. Mountain families with beehives used honey as their primary sweetener. Eating honeycomb wax was standard practice — the wax is edible and cleans the teeth.