Raw Food, Superfoods & Bees
I think the Universe is trying to force me into eating more raw foods. The only cooking device I have in my Peruvian kitchen is a small gas camping stove and it broke last night so I have no alternative to cook or heat food until it´s replaced. I do have a fireplace but I´m not really equiped to cook on the open flames just yet. So I either have to eat out or make raw foods!
I´ve only just started to relax into switching to Peruvian and South American superfoods from the usual superfoods that I´m used to. And I´ve been trying to do a little foraging for wild foods. I found my Mexican friend the other day in my back garden cutting off big leaves of cactus which he cooked up that night with tomato, onion and a few herbs. It´s definitely a taste that I need to get used to but I LOVE the idea of finding wild foods and being able to eat them. It´s strange to me that the Peruvians here don´t eat the cactus so there is actually somewhat of an abundance for us that know how to spot them and cook them.
One thing I have noticed here in Peru which you may need to look out for in your own country too, is the purity of the honey. I´ve been trained here in the Sacred Valley as a bee keeper so have been working a little with a bunch of bee hives my teacher keeps not far from my house. Sadly there are not enough flowers for the bees to pollinate in the area so they barely have enough food for themselves, let alone enough to share with us. So while we search for a better location in the valley for the hives, we´ve had to top up their food supply with sugar. If there is not enough honey then the bees will eat the sugar if they do have enough honey then they´ll ignore the sugar and eat their own supply.
But this lack of honey in our own hives has made me wary of the honey that´s sold at the local market. It´s a well known fact that some unethical bee keepers will take ALL of the honey supplies and leave the bees with nothing but sugar or sugar water. It´s also common for them to top up a tub of honey with a bit of sugar water so you may not actually be getting pure honey.
Bees and honey are wonderful gifts that not only provide us with a whole range of nutrients that actually taste really good they also provide a very important role in the life cycle of this planet. Bees are responsible for pollinating most of our trees and plants and if something were to happen to the bees and they were to become extinct, then we´d actually have to start hand pollinating ourselves which would be a huge and tedious task something that would take us a lot longer than it would a hive of worker bees.
So if you have even a tiny bit of interest in bees, then I encourage you to take the plunge and learn a little by doing a course and getting yourself a hive (or two). The more that we can do to support and help the bee population the better. And the benefit of having your own hives is fresh honey, bee pollen and propolis (which is super easy to collect mind you you´ll never need to buy propolis again and it´s magical stuff).
I guess I just love bees. It has been an absolute pleasure being able to spend time with them and see close up how they live and how they work. And I guess I just want to share that pleasure with you ..
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