Eats & Beats: Sweet Bee & Co.
If you frequent Mo’ Betta Green Marketplace over the summer months in Cousins Plaza next to the Blair Caldwell African American Research Library, you may have come across the Sweet Bee & Co. booth and met Mitsue Yamamoto, who lovingly works it. Homegrown vegetables and natural baked goods like organic breads and cookies made from sourdough fill her stall.
When Mitsue moved to Denver from Japan, she was pursuing her interests in architecture and interior design. After battling breast cancer twice, her journey as a survivor pushed her in a new direction. “So I start kind of questioning what I'm really putting in my mouth. So I just Google how old is grocery store food is, and then I recognize, oh, no wonder cancer came back. So I said I just have to do it myself. And then after I'm eating and growing vegetable, I literally felt so great and then I also enjoying and I'm learning so much and I cannot just stop, so I end up like this!”
Four or five boxes full of sourdough loaves, bagels, and cookies surrounded us in the KUVO studio as we learned more about Sweet Bee & Co. on Eats & Beats. She shared that she very soon came to the realization that she can give back to our community in this same way. The modern food system, much like society, is set on a fast-paced track. Mitsue argues that it isn’t the way making and eating food needs to be. “We want to be slow. We want to have a moment we can feel we are living and we exist here.” Flash forward to 2021, and Mitsue founded Sweet Bee & Co., a Denver-based sugar studio and urban farm specializing in custom cake designs, sugar flowers, confections, and fresh greens. She continues to bring her baked goods and produce to farmers markets, festivals, and taprooms/breweries around our state.
Listen below to our full conversation around the power of health and the wealth we feel from it.
To learn more about her practice and to check out her schedule, visit Sweet Bee & Co.
Photo credit: Will Ornberg, Radio Multimedia Producer
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