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Posts Tagged ‘bread’

Making the Earth into a Sandwich

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 25, 2020| 6 Comments »

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Photo: Etienne Naude
“I felt that I was making something bigger than me,” said Angel Sierra (right) after he and Etienne Naude made the Earth into a sandwich with pieces of bread 8,000 miles apart.

I love any attention-getting gag meant to show we are all part of one world. This story describes a feat that seems silly on the surface, but draws attention to something deep. Eight thousand miles deep.

As Owen Amos reported at the BBC in January, “Two men in New Zealand and Spain have created an ‘Earth sandwich’ — by placing bread on precise points, either side of the planet, at the same time.

“The man behind the sandwich, Etienne Naude from Auckland, told the BBC he wanted to make one for ‘years,’ but had struggled to find someone in Spain, on the other side of the globe. He finally found someone after posting on the online message board, Reddit.

“The men used longitude and latitude to make sure they were precisely opposite. That meant there was around 12,724km (7,917 miles) of Earth packed between the slices — and some 20,000km between the men, for those forced to travel the conventional route.

“The first ‘Earth sandwich’ is credited to the American artist Ze Frank, who organised two slices of baguette to be placed in New Zealand and Spain in 2006. …

“Wanting to create his own, Mr Naude, 19, used an online longitude and latitude tool called ‘tunnel to the other side of the Earth’ to find his exact opposite point. …

“He posted on the Spain section of the online message board Reddit. He got ‘a few replies’ and found one person close to the precise location.

Angel Sierra, a 34-year-old chef, told the BBC he replied to the message because ‘it can help to show how people can work together across the globe … I felt that I was making something bigger than me.’ …

“Once the men were in contact, then came the tricky part — making a sandwich with another person when you are on opposite sides of the planet.

” ‘It was quite hard to organise since it’s 12-hour time difference,’ Mr Naude said. ‘And there’s lots of things to arrange, such as the kind of bread, the time, the [precise] location, et cetera. … It’s quite tough to find a spot which isn’t water on the New Zealand end — and where public roads or paths intersect in both sides.’ …

“Using a ‘near top of the range laser cutter,’ he burnt an ‘Earth sandwich’ design onto 20 slices of bread, then used one slice to mark his exact, tightly defined sandwich spot in New Zealand.

“His counterpart used nine slices of unmarked bread to make sure he covered the exact spot. …

“The scientific name for points opposite each other on the Earth’s surface is antipodes … According to World Atlas, only around 15% of ‘territorial land’ is antipodal to other land. The UK, Australia and most of the US do not have antipodal land points — the other side of the world is water. More at the BBC, here.

Naude was later reported saying, “It’s also quite nice to just know that there is someone at the exact opposite point of the world that has done exactly the same thing as you. In this one particular instance, we’ve got entirely different lives, but we are now connected by this one point.”

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Turning Bread into Beer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2018| 2 Comments »

Photo: Toast Ale 
Toast Ale brews its commercial ales with surplus bread at a brewery in Yorkshire. It also pairs up local breweries and bakeries to help them tackle food waste in their own communities.

I have never been a beer drinker, but I have to give a thumbs-up to Toast Ale in the UK because it’s trying to reduce food waste through an unusual brewing process.

Carolyn Beeler of PRI’s The World has the story. “It’s a Wednesday night in central London and the trendy Temple Brew House pub is packed with people out for after-work beers and burgers. A crowd in one corner is sipping intently from half-pint tasting glasses, savoring a beer they helped brew about a month earlier using an unusual ingredient: leftover bread. …

“The beer was brewed at the pub’s tiny in-house brewery in collaboration with Toast Ale, a British craft beer company that uses waste bread to make beer on a commercial scale.

“ ‘In the UK, 44 percent of all bread is wasted,’ says Toast Ale’s chief brand and finance officer Louisa Ziane. ‘So we take surplus bread from bakeries and sandwich makers, and we replace a third of the barley that would otherwise have been used to brew, upcycling bread that would have otherwise been wasted.’ …

“Once the company starts turning a profit, it plans to donate those profits to Feedback, a charity that fights against food waste and shares a founder, Tristram Stuart, with the beer brand. (The company says it’s been able to make donations to Feedback already through its local collaborations.) …

“Around the world, about one-third of the food that’s produced ends up going to waste. That’s a big problem for the world’s hungry, but it’s also a big contributor to climate change: Producing that food emits as much greenhouse gases as many individual countries. …

“ ‘There are bakeries up and down the country who are left with surplus bread at the end of the day, and there are also over 2,000 breweries in the UK,’ Ziane says, so Toast is playing matchmaker with these local bakeries and breweries. …

Toast says it works with bakeries to make sure they’ve exhausted the options to get bread to people who would eat it before agreeing to turn it into beer. …

“Michael Mulcahy, who helped stir up that mash with a red plastic shovel, says, ‘It takes it away from being a hippie environmentalist thing,’ Mulcahy says. ‘It’s the pub. It’s the guys at the bar drinking beer, it’s football and baseball.’

“Toast’s beer recipe is online for home-brewers to try, and the company has franchised or licensed its brand in South Africa, Brazil and Iceland. Last year they expanded to the New York City area.” More here.

My husband once tried home brewing, but it was a lot of work, and the beer that resulted didn’t taste as good as the beers he could buy. Still, if someone is into home brewing, the Toast recipe could be fun to try.

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Teen Launches Homeless Nonprofit

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 3, 2017| 7 Comments »

Jerry and Priscilla’s granddaughter, recently accepted at Stanford, founded a club at her Vancouver high school to collect and distribute food for residents experiencing homelessness.

She feels pretty strongly that, in modern society, the distribution of resources is out of whack, and she wanted to reach out to those who have little. She started with donations from one bakery willing to give her fresh leftover bread at the end of the day.

CBC caught up with Kristen Anderson in the giving season, last Christmas.

“Grade 12 student Kristen Anderson founded ‘Kitchen on a Mission’ in July of 2015.

” ‘I tried at first to go down and hand out sandwiches but realized I couldn’t afford to buy the bread every day for this, so I had to rethink my idea.’

“Anderson was then inspired by an article she read about New York teens collecting leftover restaurant food and feeding the homeless. …

“Anderson and other volunteers from Winston Churchill Secondary set out collecting, not only bread, but Danishes and other baked goods and dropping them off at shelters under the umbrella of the Atira Women’s Resource Society.

“She knocked on more bakery doors and soon enlisted [four more]. Since its early days, the club has grown to five schools and 100 students who collect goods for 10 different shelters. …

“The club members say their volunteer work is satisfying and eye opening.

” ‘I didn’t realize what a community the Downtown Eastside was before going down there each day with my friends. They are such kindhearted people down there. They were giving me advice on my life, to stay in school and listen to my parents. I even had one man play guitar for me, which was really touching because I love to sing.’ ”

Pretty amazing young lady.

Video of the interview here.

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Pay What You Want at Panera Cafe

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Panera Bread has set up a foundation to fund Panera Cares, a pay-what-you-can opportunity for buying baked goods, sandwiches, and meals.

“The concept was born during the tough days of the recession. [Panera co-chief executive Ron] Shaich saw a television story about a cafe in Colorado that fed everyone at whatever price they could afford, which he said inspired him to find ways for Panera to address ‘food insecurity.’ …

“By May 2010, the first Panera Cares had opened in Clayton, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. For the first one and others since then in Dearborn, Mich., Portland, Ore., and Chicago, Panera Cares sought locations that are easily accessible by public transportation and that attract economically diverse customers. …

“Panera’s vendors contributed to the [Boston] effort, giving about $80,000 worth of free furniture and lighting, along with cameras and and coffee. The rest of the money needed to open the store, an estimated $1 million, is being absorbed by Panera Bread’s corporate operations.

“ ‘It is a community cafe of shared responsibility,’ [Kate Antonacci, project manager of Panera Cares] said. ‘One of the goals of this charitable program is to help ensure that everyone who needs a meal gets one and to raise the level of awareness about food insecurity in the country.”

The Boston Globe’s Jenn Abelson has more here, with a follow-up on the successful first week in Boston, here. See the Christian Science Monitor‘s take, here.

Will you go? Will you pay full price or a bit more for others?

Photograph: John Tlumacki / Globe Staff
The Panera Cares Community Cafe opened in Center Plaza on January 24 with a pay-as-you-can approach.

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