Page 25 - GBC fall 2015

PHOTO: Photos by MG
Living in Southwestern Ontario’s Elgin County, I had the pleasure of growing up around amazing local farmers. In my current position as Executive Chef at St. Thomas Golf & Country Club, I continue to use these resources in my club’s kitchen. We have some of the best local producers in the region who supply our club with corn, strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries, and other such things as perch, and pickerel from Lake Erie.
HONEY ON THE COURSE
Having extensive experience work- ing with world-renowned chefs such as Alfred Estephan, Volker Jendoff and Schott Baechler as mentors has taught me to always re-evaluate menu items and recipe ingredients. I am constantly analyzing the food we serve at the club to determine how we can make it taste better and be more cost effective.
Two years ago, we began making our own honey on the course. Set back out of play, off the fairway on the second hole, we have over four million bees; from which we harvest our own fresh unpasteurized honey. This honey can be sampled by our members and is featured in many of our in- house recipes.
We have a local beekeeper from Port Stanley who looks after our bees. He comes to the course every couple of weeks to check on the hives to make sure the bees are healthy and doing what they are supposed to do (i.e. store honey).
The only expense the club has to keep the bees is the actual cost of the honey to get harvested, which goes back into our hives. Having bees onsite does not make us a fortune, as we sit at about 50% food cost, plus the time to adhere our custom labels on the jars. However, it is more of a novelty for our members to be proud of and something for them to enjoy and brag to family and friends. We are now into our second season of making honey and hope to double our sales, as last year we sold approximately 300 jars of honey (at $10 each) in our pro shop.
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