Scoots is Pooped -and- How to Rescue Hard Honey

Poor Scoots.  It looks like she may need a new battery.  So I will probably do that today. Hello tiny new battery, good-bye money.

Yay, happy Friday everyone.  It’s not a payday, but I’ll take it.

Yesterday as I was digging through my pantry for something else, I noticed shenanigans happening  in the honey bottle. See that picture on the left?  Shenanigans.  Sometimes we have to deal with the ugly underbelly of life here at Ideas for Frugal Living.

Plus I just don’t stand for shenanigans! Not when honey is so expensive.

I had the honey bottle turned upside down to make it easier to use those last bits when the time comes.  The supply is getting a little low, and also older.  Which means that some of the honey starts to crystallize on the bottom of the container.

I want to use every bit of that honey up.  I paid good money for it.  So there are a couple of ways to deal with this situation. None of these methods involve throwing out the old honey.

If you’re in a hurry, like you need to make that bread NOW, the best thing to do is to run hot water over the bottom where the honey is crystallized.  But this is expensive and wasteful (hot water not being cheap).  Not the best cheapskate choice, but better than nothing.

I’m not a fan of microwaving the bottle to “defrost” it.  This particular bottle is cheap plastic, so I’m not sure it’s a good idea.  But maybe just 30 seconds to begin the loosening-up process in conjunction with other methods.

If you notice this distressing situation BEFORE you need the honey, than you can take your time, and loosen things up in a more Frugal manner.

You can fill up an empty Folger’s Coffee container with the hottest water from your tap, and soak that puppy for a while. That works pretty well. I’ve done that lots of times.  I put a big heavy soup cup/bowl on top to hold it down in the water.

Another thing you can do is wet a dish towel so it’s a little bit on the soppy side, and microwave that for one minute.  Then put that hot towel on “top” of the inverted honey bottle.  If the honey is really hard, like this was, this will take a few times.  I just kept doing this while I went about my other chores.  This works well, too, and is the method I used. See? It looks like my honey bottle is at the barber.

Once the crystallized honey gets down into the liquified stuff, it dissolves on its own.  Though the honey as a whole is thicker and goopier then when the bottle is brand new.  But it’s still perfectly good to use.  As far I can tell, thicker honey makes no difference in the end product.  Which for me is honey-whole-wheat bread, which is what I mainly use it for.

Shenanigans - 0.  Tessie - 1.