Back in March I wondered “where can I buy raw sustainably caught sea food for cooking at home?” so I asked my insightful friend Myke Shaw, the Executive Sous Chef at Vancouver Aquarium.
With summer in full motion, I was curious what her garden was like so I’ve asked her:
What’s the best part about having your own garden?
Now, I’ve had many opportunities to sample her delectable creations and I look forward to trying out whatever it is she comes up with next… Particularly anything honey flavoured 
Here’s what she’s got to say:
The beauty of having my own organic garden…..
I can’t tell you just how much satisfaction I’ve been given in having my own organic herb and tomato garden. I am giddy just thinking of new ways to use them in my cooking. But there is so much more to having a garden, I get to give back to an incredible species. BEES!
I love bees! I was so sad when I heard their populations were dramatically dropping worldwide. British Columbia has some of the world’s best honey, I love to use honey in my cooking. Funny thing about honey, the edible flowers and herbs that bees love happen to go magically together with honey. Bees love my lavender and I love lavender honey. It’s quite easy to make your own, I pick lavender flowers before they open and put them in my honey. In a couple of days, magic!
But let’s talk more about my furry little friends; these magical flying critters are dying off at an alarming rate. Worldwide scientists have come up with some theories; chemical pesticides and growth hormones for one.
This chemical cocktail is having effects on their sight and sense of smell. This interrupts not only their mating habits but also the way they produce honey. When Scout Bees find a source of food, they return to the hive and dance on the vertical walls of the honey comb. They dance in a figure eight pattern with a little waggle in the middle. The direction and duration of the waggle tells other bees where they can find the food source. So you can see their dilemma if they can’t see so well. They rely heavily on their sense of smell to find the food in the first place. I feel so bad for them, so that’s why I wanted to share this.
What can you do for them?
#1 stop using chemicals! It’s said that pesticides may also play a big part on how their brains function. Just think bees help pollenate 1/3 of the world’s food crops. That’s one in three bites of food you eat everyday!
Can you imagine life without peaches, blueberries, strawberries, melons, citrus fruits, apples, broccoli, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers; I could so go on and on!!!! Basically if they die away into extinction we would be left with just grains and water, how boring would our lives be without them?
Never mind never having honey, I would really miss the presence of my extraordinary little friends.
So really I am asking for you to help my friends out by buying organic, growing organic and living organic. Show some love for these charismatic creatures, I am sure we would dearly miss them.
Happy eating!
Myke Shaw
Executive Sous Chef
MORE BEE INFO: BEES FOR DEVELOPMENT DOT ORG
PHOTO SOURCE @ BUG GUIDE
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