In the children’s story of the Little Red Hen, the hardworking chicken plants the wheat, harvests the wheat, grinds the flour and bakes the bread, but her odyssey is nothing compared to that of Andy George, who took 6 months and $1,500 to make a sandwich from scratch. To make a simple chicken sandwich, a whole host of agricultural activities are involved: growing the vegetables, milking the cow, collecting the honey, and killing the chicken. The raw ingredients include wheat, lettuce, tomato, sunflower, cucumber, dill, pepper, garlic, salt, chicken, milk, eggs and honey. Of course, the vegetables were the easiest part of the sandwich to make. There were no shortcuts in George’s preparation. He took a plane to the ocean, where he collected seawater used to make salt. Then he milked a cow to make cheese, followed by building a press to extract the oil from sunflower seeds to make the mayonnaise. Next he harvested wheat by hand, separated out the chaff using a fan in his apartment, and ground it to make flour. The result? “It’s not bad,” said George, before having a hearty laugh. What you don’t see is the months that it took for him to pull all of this together. As he explained, the same sandwich would have cost roughly $15 to buy expertly prepared ingredients and 6 minutes to assemble. His version took 6 months and cost $1,500. So, there is value in relying on those who know their craft when it comes to producing food.
