The Queen of Nordic cookery, Trine Hahnemann, is coming back to Kraków. This time to talk about her “Rye Bread Project,” a movement started three years ago to reintroduce heritage rye grains to the North-East region of the United States. The project’s first initiative, the ‘Smørrebrød Table‘, organized in the New York City brought together specialists from different fields including organic local farmers, bakers, chefs, international government officials, ecological planners, public health experts, educators and parents in an attempt to collaboratively solve important food issues ranging from health to ecology. Last year, the Rye Bread Project reached a significant milestone when 24 varieties of heritage rye seeds were generously donated to the purposes of this project by the Norwegian-based Svalbard Global Seed Vault and later were distributed to the American farmers to start a long-term testing process.
In addition to bringing rye bread back to our homes and lives, Trine shares her love of food through cooking on television shows such as Good Morning Denmark, writing for Denmark’s leading women’s magazine column, tweeting, founding new projects, advocating for sustaining regional farming, and writing cooking books. As if that was not enough, she also teaches cooking classes and organizes workshops focused on sustaining the food culture.
Trine’s fascinating background includes having an on-tour catering company and cooking for artists such as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Soundgarden, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Tina Turner, Rolling Stones, as well as many Danish bands. She also founded a company that runs in-house canteens and staff restaurants for large corporations and government organizations, including the Danish House of Parliament.
As part of her Kraków visit, Trine also plans to organize a rye bread baking workshop and teach us about the value of rye bread and whole grain meals. We are all very excited to have Trine back in Poland in October!