While I am well aware that the mishandling of food and substandard sanitary conditions of especially meat and water cause hundreds of thousands of deaths among especially small children around the world, I am not particularly picky when it comes to hygene in the preparation of food. I have travelled way too much and eaten too much food directly from nature to not be used to insects in fruits or un-dished cookware in roadside servings. Thus, when the Macedonian Beekeepers’ Association had arranged a three day market in Skopje to promote their products, I didn’t hesitate to pick up some delicious locally, small-scale produced honey. I saw of course that the jars were not labelled properly and unlikely vacuum sealed, but it I didn’t think it really mattered. After all, honey is supposedly the one product in nature that doesn’t spoil. It was also a nice occasion to meet producers and learn a little more about this delicate product. One of the jars that I bought was honey with royal jelly (what the selected queen bee is fed to develop), which according to the vendors at the market is good for our health, strength, and general well-being. As the autumn cold hit me today (and no, it couldn’t have been more untimely), I decided to test how effective the royal jelly honey really is. But when I opened the jar (which was a recycled jar I might add), it turned out that it was broken under the lid and since glass is the one thing that I really don’t want to ingest, I threw it away. So I guess packaging standards do serve their purpose sometimes….

I bought a jar from this stand. The daughter was an excellent interpreter when I chatted with her and her mom, and so when I wanted to take a picture of them, the father asked if I wanted a picture of the three of us instead, which of course I wanted.