Honey water

Shahad garam pani is the home name for honey water, a glass of warm water sweetened with a teaspoon of honey. The recipe is as simple as it sounds: warm the water, stir in the honey and drink. The first question most people ask is how warm the water should be, and the answer is practical: warm it until it steams but does not boil, then take the pan off the heat, so the honey melts in and the glass is ready to sip.

Measure the honey with a teaspoon and count each one as 7 g; the two teaspoons in this recipe come to 14 g. Honey is 304 kcal and 82.4 g of carbohydrate per 100 g, mostly fructose and glucose, the two sugars a 2008 review in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition names as its main components. The WHO 2015 guideline on sugars intake recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of total daily energy and suggests going further, below 5%. Each glass here adds about 21 kcal and 5.8 g of carbohydrate, so a glass every morning is easy to fit inside that limit and easy to count.

Drink it plain or dress it with lemon, ginger and mint. A quarter lemon per glass keeps it light, grated ginger gives it warmth, and crushed black pepper is the optional pinch some homes add. Skip the lemon for a plainer cup, and double the recipe for a flask.