Drink With Honey This Valentine's Day

Dining out on Valentine's Day can be terribly expensive — and frankly, a colossal drag. The menus tend to be overpriced prix fixes, and many establishments try to shuffle as many patrons through their dining room as quickly as possible, discouraging lingering and enjoying the evening with your sweetheart — which is the whole point of the holiday, after all.

Drink With Honey This Valentine's Day (Slideshow)

We're fans of the at-home Valentine's celebration — save the dining out for days that your favorite restaurant is less jam-packed, when you can really savor the evening over a beautiful meal and several hours. But if you're considering snuggling up with your darling under a blanket this Valentine's Day instead of giving in to extortionate dining prices, you should have some sweet treats on hand for you both to sip on.

And what's more thematically appropriate for a day dedicated to your honey than honey-based drinks? Honey wine, or mead, is the oldest alcoholic drink known to man —mentions of the sweet concoction are found in texts dating from 4,000 years ago — which means this beverage is a seriously tried-and-true method of wooing.

But what wasn't known 4,000 years ago is that honey is also good for you and your love — a dose can help aid digestion after a rich meal, its antibacterial properties are wonderful for your health and make your skin glow, and the sticky substance gives you tons of energy, making it the perfect ingredient for a Valentine's Day nightcap.

For most cocktails, you're going to want to use a slightly thinned honey syrup  — a simple syrup-like combination of honey and water — rather than mixing in honey itself, which is too viscous. You can add other flavors to the syrup while you heat it (lavender is a natural, as is rosemary, or if you like it spicy, jalapeño infuses beautifully). Plain honey, however, is great for creating a cocktail rim — using a clean paintbrush, you can paint honey onto the rim of a cocktail glass, then gently press it into everything from cookie crumbs to sprinkles to crushed conversation hearts.