Dhru Purohit Show - How Lack of Cooking Is Sabotaging Our Health and Making Us Sicker Than Ever with Kimbal Musk

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

This episode is brought to you by Cozy Earth, AquaTru, and Lumebox.  With our busy modern lives, we often rely on quick and often processed foods while on the run. However, we know there are enormous health benefits when we cook at home and together. Today’s guest is here to share his mission of bringing cooking back into the kitchen with our loved ones. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Kimbal Musk to discuss his new cookbook. Kimbal shares his journey in cooking and what ultimately led him to open his restaurant. He also discusses why society has moved away from cooking at home and how we can bring healthy cooking back into our homes. Additionally, he shares why he became passionate about the regenerative movement and the formidable experiences in his life that shaped how he looks at preparing and cooking for his community. Kimbal Musk is a South African-born entrepreneur, philanthropist, and restaurateur.  In the early 2000s, Kimbal Musk shifted his focus to the culinary world and embarked on a mission to promote sustainable and locally sourced food. He founded The Kitchen, a family of restaurants prioritizing farm-to-table practices and aiming to impact the food system positively. He co-founded Big Green, a non-profit organization that builds outdoor learning gardens in schools to teach children about the importance of fresh, healthy food.  In this episode, Dhru and Kimbal dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The power of community (1:00 / 1:00)  Challenges to cooking at home (3:47 / 3:47) Kimbal’s cooking journey after September 11th (8:26 / 5:34) Kimbal’s experience with food as a child (15:05 / 12:10) How Kimbal’s restaurant in Boulder came about (18:45  /15:50) The journey to create the cookbook (25:40 / 22:50) Growing up during the Apartheid in South Africa (30:00 / 25:00) Connecting to the animal you plan to eat (35:10 / 30:30) Kimbal’s favorite recipes (38:35 / 33:37) Regenerative movement and Kimbal’s passion for it (41:15 / 36:18) Innovation tips for cooking at home (48:41 / 43:43) What Kimbal has changed his mind about (53:50 / 49:20) Final Thoughts (58:55 / 53:50)  Also mentioned in this episode: The Kitchen Cookbook  The Kitchen  Right now, get 40% off your Cozy Earth sheets. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use code DHRUP. AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself.  Lumebox is offering my community $260 off their FDA-registered portable Red Light device!  That's over 50% off! Go to thelumebox.com/dhru and get your Red Light device.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gimble, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. You have a new cookbook. We're going to talk all things, food, and why it's so important. And maybe share some of your favorite recipes. That's great. Thank you so much.

Yeah. I'm excited to be here. Well, when we were chit-chatting a little bit, I think a reminder for individuals is that, yes, you have a cookbook. But eating and cooking together, and one of your goals is to have people have a better relationship with food, right? And actually taking it into their own homes, into their own hands and making it fun and accessible. You've done that. Yeah, being with your cooking with your family and friends.

You know, you're such a great longevity guide for folks out there. It's just having relationships, you know, not being lonely. Loneliness is really something that truly does kill. And one of the most powerful things we can do is just build up, build relationships with those close to us, our friends, our family, and also to share it with our broader community as well. What do you look at? When you look at the landscape right now, right? It seems like, We're doing less and less of that as a nation. Exactly. What's getting in the way of that?

Well, that's why I wanted to write the cookbook. You know, the kitchen has been Boldos Community Bistro for 20 years. It's our 20th anniversary. It's another reason for doing it. Congratulations. Thank you so much. But the other reason was I just watched, especially with COVID, where we were really, frankly, just staying in our basements.

And being by ourselves, social media has gotten to, you know, really a toxic place. And so it has its value, but generally it certainly doesn't help with relationships. And actually what really will make us happy and what really will make us live longer and live happier or longer at the same time, you don't want to live longer and not happy. And so what usually does it at the same time is community. It is those relationships. There's this amazing study by Harvard that started about 90 years ago now in the 1930s. And it took a community of wealthy kids and poor kids from the wealthiest area and the poorest area and has followed them now for almost 100 years.

And they've looked at, you know, obviously modern science, the things we're doing nowadays in the past maybe five or 10 years, that's really hard to include in the study because this is a study from the 1930s. But these folks are still alive. And the only single factor that links them all together is healthy, deep, good relationships at the age of 50. That's what made them live longer. That's what made them live happier. And so I just want to spread that message that we should be out with our friends, with our family. We should be cooking with them. Find other ways to get together as well.

But food is just the best. Yeah, you know, to build on that. And I believe that that study was the longest study, the longest running study. That's right. Longest running study. Exactly. To build on that, there's the first. Framingham heart study. And out of that, there's been a bunch of cohorts of data that have been

turned into different studies. So one of them that was there is that they found that actually obesity, which our country is showing with, is actually in a way contagious in the sense that that's right. If you're a friend more so than even your spouse, more so than your parents, if your friend, you know, who typically you'd break bread with or maybe share a beer with or not share a beer with or have positive habits or negative habits with, if they, you know, who typically If they gain weight, that's the earliest predictor that you're going to gain weight next. Exactly. I believe it's as high as 70% increased chance of you becoming obese if you are with every

single friend that you have that is obese. It is an additional 70% multiplier on your chance of being obese. So it really, it doesn't just matter, of course, if your friends are obese, but it also matters if you are because the healthier you are, the more likely you're going to make your friends around you healthier as well. Why do you think that as a country, we're just not cooking as much? What's getting in the way of that? Well, I think we did have a really good tradition of cooking until processed food kind of came along with, you know, frankly, it was the 80s and 90s where we really pushed fast food.

When it's necessary, it's a useful thing. But it's not cheaper than going to the grocery store. It's not cheaper than roasting a chicken with some vegetables for a family of four. you go to McDonald's for four people, you know, two adults, two parents, two kids, you'll spend over $30 per person, sorry, for the family. But if you go to a grocery store and you have a chick, you get a whole chicken, you get some side of broccoli, side of carrots,

you probably get away with less than $10 in terms of what you'd spend. So it's really not a price thing. But the marketing and the push from the processed food companies has been really extraordinary and they make a lot of money. So they are pushing, it's just a lot easier. Arguably, it's easy, but you're still going to drive to the restaurant. I think it's way more fun. There are many reasons why you should cook for your family and friends,

but it's also just more fun. It's just you connect with your kids. I love cooking with my kids. When I'm in Boulder and I'm at home, I cook at least once a day with my family. I love to cook for breakfast. Sometimes I'll also cook dinner. It's meditative.

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one direction or another. And for me, it was, some of those moments were a little less traumatic, But 9-11 was truly one of those for me. I lived downtown, so Chambers and Broadway, very close to the World Trade Centers, and I was woken up to the sounds of the first plane hitting the building. It was, you've got to put yourself in the mind of a New Yorker.

It was not an emergency. It was, I can't believe. You know, the doorman was saying something about that, like the plane is at the building. I was like, some idiot is blown a small plane into something. And it wasn't in any way. an alarm. And I literally just took a shower and then went out to the deli across the road to get a coffee. Again, really not panicking, but when I got to the bottom of the elevator,

I said another plane he set the building. And I still didn't really get it. I was still kind of like shock and not quite sure what to think. Went into the deli and there were way more people in line than usual, which was a bit strange. I think maybe people didn't know what to do. But No one was running, no one was panicking. It was more just everyone was acting a little strangely. And it was actually over the radio where we heard that the Pentagon got hit. And that is when everyone just started running. And we didn't even know what direction to run.

Keep in mind, we can't see the World Trade Center when you're running on the ground in New York. Just started seeing people running in one direction. We just don't know what to do. You just start running. I grabbed my wife. We ran. We got to Canal's store. when the first one fell, this huge wall of dust coming towards us. Anyone who was caught inside

of that wall of dust, we were in those reports for every year. You got to get a health report. Thankfully, we were not inside that wall of dust. But if you were, you would have had permanent damage. It was, you couldn't get through that without just being covered in white dust and I'm sure inside your lungs as well. Anyway, we got to Union Square and saw the second one fall. So that white dust was the for the first one falling. And we saw the second one fall. And it was just, it was like reality was breaking. It just was not possible that this, these structures that were part of the landscape

from now just, which just fell in front of us. It still shocks me, my system even as I said. And so I, I just graduated from cooking school. My mom was up at 20, between, on a park between Broadway and Fifth. And I, sorry, 20 second of Broadway. And I stayed there with about eight other people with my wife at the time. And we really didn't know what to do.

Everyone was trying to be helpful or not helpful. But really, we were just panicking in our own little, maybe panics the wrong word, more like shock. Really don't know what to do. And my mom got a call to volunteer to cook for the firefighters down at Ground Zero. and she said, you know, she's not a cook, but her son is a cook. My mom is a, she's now a pretty well-known model, but she was for decades one of the top dietitians in America. And so that's why she got the call,

and they offered her the opportunity. Millions of people were volunteering, so it wasn't like they were looking for volunteers. It was more like going through the potential list of people who they should call first. And she said, you know, my son's available, and they said, well, we have a, a lot of other people to call. Oh, he actually has a security pass because I live down there

and so that I could get back down there. And then they called back and they said, actually, if he's willing to do it, we would love that because dealing with security was really difficult. So I got this incredible opportunity for six weeks, 16 hours a day to just peel potatoes, eventually make pasta, eventually cook some of the finest food you can imagine for these incredible firefighters risking their lives. I work my way up over time because most people were coming in for one or two days at a time and I was there the whole time because again I had a security pass so I really had nothing else to do

and this was a beautiful way to process the trauma. There's nothing better than just keeping your hands better. And as I mentioned about cooking, it's fun, it's calming. And I saw it the same way at 9-11. It was like, I get to wake up and just cook. day. It was quite a beautiful feeling. So I worked my way up all the way to be the guy that takes the ATV of the food with a cooler on the back of the ATV down to a gymnasium that was converted into a cafeteria for these firefighters right outside these giant piles of melting

metal that are still melting weeks after 9-11. And they come in, they'd have these shells on covered in dust. They take their shells off. They just have these sort of gray faces, they wouldn't be talking to each other. We would feed them, I think some of the best food they've ever had. We were putting so much love into the food.

It was a beautiful thing. And they would eat their food and then slowly life would come back into their eyes and they'd start talking to each other. They would start connecting. They kind of become human again. And then 45 minutes later, they put their shells back on

and go right back into those. digging through those giant piles of melting metal to save American lives. It's just one of the most beautiful things I've ever been part of. So I was then, I was like, you know, I feel this community through food, through food. I feel the power of what food can do. Up until that point, I'd kind of seen cooking as a way to learn to cook. I've always loved cooking. I've cooked since I was a kid.

But this time, I was like, I think I need to go do a restaurant. I almost could not not do a restaurant. So found my way to, to, to Colorado and open the kitchen. Powerful. Obviously, you played your own part in being at service to the people who were taking care of so many individuals. And one of the things that you mentioned, as part of that experience, is you walked away,

you know, having really felt the power of community at such a pivotal time in this moment that was, you know, shocking the world. But going back even a little bit further, since you mentioned that, you know, cooking was a big part of your life growing up. Your mom had a background in being diet. dietitian, right? What were some of the formidable experiences that you had with food in South Africa? For me, the formative experience was actually my mom being a dietitian and not cooking well. And she first said that she's not the best cook. But it's not that she doesn't love food.

She loves food. It's just she really loved encouraging me to cook. So even as young as 11 years old. I remember asking my mom if we can have better food. And she said, well, if you want to cook, you know, it's up to you. And she gave me a carp launch of what I, what I wanted to do. She didn't really, even though she's a dietitian, she doesn't say you have to have your vegetables. She eventually did do that later. But in the beginning, it's like, what if you want to do? And it was, I remember going to the grocery store and I was a kid, so I wanted to do roast chicken with French fries. I don't usually tell the French fries. but I will at this time.

And, but the, so the roast chicken one was great. I, um, uh, ordered, I went to the butcher and the butcher said, just take this chicken. Oh, so I was 11, right? And the, and the, take, giving directions to 11 year old, a little risky. But he said, just take this chicken. Don't do anything to it.

Put it in a hot oven for one hour. And you're done. And I was up, that sounds pretty straightforward. And honestly, to this day, that is the best recipe. Now, of course, maybe it's a more specific temperature, like 450 degrees or 400 degrees, something like that. But at the end of the day, it's a hot oven for one hour. And if you look up almost any roast chicken recipe, it's about that. And I'll get the chicken in a minute, but let me tell the French fries story.

So I, of course, was also excited about French fries, but I didn't get proper directions. So I put the French fries into, I was 11, put the French fries into cold oil, and I eventually brought it to boil. and boil the french fries, they look great. But we ended up having the roast chicken and french fries for dinner. And I ended up throwing up because you can't actually eat French fries without cooking them in hot oil. I put them in cold oil, so they're like oil soaked. So there are limits who really do want to have a few recipes.

There wasn't the internet back then. But I remember that. It's such a formative moment for me because it was like, okay, first of all, the chicken was great. And I added salt and pepper and a few things like that. But the chicken was really great. And it was a real chance for my family to connect and sit down. It was very, very busy family.

And clearly, we remain busy as adults. But when I cooked, everyone would just sit down. We would talk for 20, 30 minutes. That first evening was an experiment. And I learned since then. But then I just kept doing it. And then I would add vegetables and I would add flavors, different seasonings. I could roast chicken just throw some chocolate.

chopped lemon into the cavity or some garlic, some onions in the pan, little white wine, these different things that are just tiny riffs on a core recipe that I sort of playing with and just kept cooking all the way until I was, but I went to cooking school when I was 20, I was 27 and the, I'd sold my company, I built a company, a technology company with my brother in Silicon Valley. And I sold that and I was like, okay, I can do whatever I want. I want to go to cookie school. And I always had so much fun cooking, but I really wanted, okay, let me double down on this

and see what I learned. So fast forwarding to Boulder. Boulder for anybody who hasn't been, it's one of my favorite cities. And I've been to your restaurant, by the way, it's fantastic. Boulder has a whole energy in itself and also a food philosophy, generally speaking. Yeah. And some of that energy and that philosophy led you to connect with, you know, a certain group of people that ultimately led to the restaurant.

Can you talk about that story? You bet. So Boulder is this amazing natural food community. So if you think about natural foods, it's really about Whole Foods. I mean, Whole Foods, the actual grocery store had half of its headquarters in Boulder. It's if you want to think about some of the great natural food products that we know of today, Justin's Nut Butter and several others, they come out of Boulder. Boulder is this like a little mini Silicon Valley for natural foods.

And so we arrived in Boulder, my wife, Jen at the time. We arrived in 2002 and just started to spread the word that we were looking to open a restaurant. We was walking down the street, the main street, literally the first week we were there. My dog was a young black lab, came off the leash, went off, went up to this guy. I went over and apologized, and his name was Hugo Matheson, and he was an English guy. He'd worked at the River Cafe in London, had come out to Boulder to cook, and the River Cafe in London is sort of one of the original farm-to-table restaurants. Sheepernice is that in the U.S., River Cafe is in London, and he was going to bring that,

that his background to the Boulder restaurants. He just literally hadn't even started working yet, and I said, oh, I'm just here. I was South African and just here to open a restaurant, and he invited me over to dinner. And I had this amazing experience. You know, I've just been trained in New York now, almost three years of cooking, very much the French style. I've gone to the French Culinary Institute, but also the restaurants that I cooked at were French. And the French have a very, almost the opposite approach of Italian food. Italian food is three to four ingredients, the best quality you can find, do as little as you can to them.

And the French style is more like, let's take the, I wouldn't say the cheapest ingredients, but if you look at the history of France, they really had to live through some very difficult times. So they were really prepared to cook with whatever they had. And this might take six hours to work on. It might have 25 ingredients and lots and lots of technique to get it to taste good. And it does taste good. But it's a lot of work. And when all of a sudden I went over to Hugo's house and would have this incredible meat,

He just charred some sea bass with some salsa verde and some braised eggplant and a little panacotta for dessert. I just watched him work. It was 30 minutes of cooking time for food that was absolutely fantastic. In fact, I remember it being the best meal I ever had. And coming from New York, that says a lot. So I asked Hugo if I could cook for him because he was an exact chef at a nearby restaurant. So I worked for him for a year, just learning under him and then said, hey, would you mind, would you be open to opening a restaurant with me?

And we became cool founders with Jan. And we opened the kitchen in 2004. So it's 20 years. And it's been a hell of a journey. What are some key lessons that you learn in that year? First, by the way, a year, that's a long time. And I'm sure it went by quickly. It's both.

Yeah. But to like essentially apprentice underneath somebody and work with him. Yeah. What were some of the key things that you learned that eventually you guys kind of took into the spirit of the kitchen? Well, I think the big thing I learned from Hugo was the power of the good ingredients. And that's also where Boulder comes in as the sort of natural foods center where people had so much respect for local farmers. The farmer's market was one of the biggest in the country. Even though Boulder is a small town, it was number three.

I think the only two that were bigger were in New York City. like literally Boulder is a is a real badass where it comes to you know good good tasty food and so one of the things that he wanted to do and he was working with the restaurant he was he was part of to he wanted to work more with farmers but the there were a lot of things getting in the way of that the farmers wouldn't you they didn't use email they didn't even frankly email wasn't even a thing I couldn't even believe it I'm coming from Silicon Valley or even New York and you get to the food community and email was just not a thing. I couldn't really believe it.

And so everything was paper chits. So it was sort of 2003 time. And I watched all of this happening and I said, you know, there's got to be a way to do this. And so I started talking to the farmers that Hugo is really the relationship manager with those farmers. He'd known them for years. And I said, would you guys be open to using email? It's this crazy thing where you just send an email what you have, and we will send you an email back with what we would like.

I mean, it's hilarious that it's as simple as that. But there wasn't even texting back then. So remember that. This is pre- iPhone, pre-any of that. So I convinced several of the farmers, some of them already had Internet, some of them had computers. But I remember there was one farmer who is now passed away, but he just wasn't that into it.

and I was like, come, we really want your produce. And, you know, if you get, at the time, I think we had 40 farmers working with us, which is a lot. Restaurants just don't do that. There's a large truck that pulls up outside and generally makes ordering relatively easy. Even if you're back then still doing it over the phone, you're doing it with one major distributor. We wanted to work with these farmers. They didn't work with these distributors. You get 40 farmers, and even just one of them won't use email.

it just throws everything off. So I convinced this guy to come with me to Best Buy. I didn't buy the computer, but I asked him to buy a computer. And I said I would set it up for him. And I went back to his farm and there's a house on the farm. And set up an old school phone modem with his computer. And it was kind of a fun thing as well. And got that last farmer on email.

and then we were able to actually build a menu every single day based on what farmers were growing. It was just a beautiful time. Hugo and I would literally change the menu every day. We would write it by, we told the farmers if they could get it to us by 4 p.m., we would have the menu printed by 530, and their ingredients would be on the menu that evening. That's how we got started. Powerful. You know, we'll come back to the kitchen and the founding of it, but I want to fast forward to the book.

Why a book and why right now? How is this the right time for the book to exist and give a little bit of an overview of the spirit that you wanted to bring into the book and the recipes? Thank you. Yeah. You know, I have really watched the whole pandemic happen and I've watched the social media stuff happen. And I really believe in the power of community. I really believe in cooking with each other. I believe in the power of cooking, even if it's just for yourself. But it's so it's beautiful and therapeutic for yourself. and it is so wonderful to share your food with your friends and family. I think this is the time. You know, we really need a message around let's embrace community.

Let's embrace real life relationships. I'm not here to tell anyone not to do social media, do whatever you want, but go towards being with your friends in person and go towards cooking with each other, not necessarily for each other. Take a recipe, cook it together. For Thanksgiving, this past year of my kids and I and my wife, we just cook together. You take the mashed potatoes. I'll take the turkey.

You take the stuffing. And we've just built up that kind of home where cooking is celebrated. And so I think it's really needed right now. I think we have a crisis of loneliness that we haven't really been able to get out of after the pandemic. And if we focus and we get back into our, our, our, we have. Well, I'm going to say get back into, because I think it's been such a long time. I think we can create a new relationship, new relationship with being together in real life. And I think it's actually a thing called IRL, which I've learned from my kids.

But I like to live in real life. It's great. This episode is brought to you by Lombox. One of my favorite daily practices is using red light therapy. There are thousands of articles and studies published in PubMed on its efficacy and its ability to improve all sorts of aspects of life, like improving our skin, helping with chronic inflammation. The list goes on and on. Many experts on my podcast, doctors, researchers have gone into just how powerful red light therapy can be. And one of my favorite ways to get that red light therapy

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Sorry, right X. They know that your life growing up, both in the home, but also in a time of apartheid, was a little bit rough. Yeah. Is that fair to say? It was brutal. Yeah. And with it being rough and in reading your book and kind of seeing your work over the years, it kind of felt to me of the connecting of the dots that, and I'd love you to chime in on this, that, you know, food, even in your early years of you experimenting, was one of the grounding sort of forces for you at a time where things were kind of crazy around you. Is that a fair statement? That's exactly right. You know, I did really enjoy cooking for my family, and I really did that most of the time. But there were times where I would, you know, deal with something. I grew up in

Pretoria, which it was the capital of the apartheid government. It wasn't even, it wasn't safe for anyone to be walking on the streets, white or black. I mean, there was just so much violence. It was, it was brutal. And, you know, you come back from a situation that, that, that, it's just hard to, hard to explain because in America, it doesn't really exist, but you just need to kind of relax your nervous system. And I would just cook.

I remember just taking a few hours and just cooking and give my mind something to settle in on. There's a story that you shared with somebody else that I really sort of baked in my memory. You were on a train and you sort of witness a very brutal act of violence. Yeah, that was somebody got stabbed. Yeah, that was just an anti-apartheid rally. And there were a lot of white people and black people, but mostly black people. And most of the violence back then was actually in those rallies was mostly black on black. It was just you put enough people in an area together and they're mostly black people.

There was just a lot of fighting. It was a very low value of human life. And I saw one person just right. I was getting off a train and I saw one person stab another person, like right in front of me, stab another person to the side of their head with a dagger. and there are a whole bunch of people on the train trying to push, like, come on, get out of the train. They didn't see what I saw.

And this person lies on the ground, just blood, you know, just pooling around him. And I just kind of had to step into the blood and just only one foot. And then I would walk, and for about 100 paces, I still remember that the blood just sticking to the ground as I would walk. and yeah it was just those are difficult times well you know one of the takeaways that i got from

that story was that you were processing in real time but you didn't even have time to process that because the violence was so ubiquitous there was no there was no hanging around called the cop no no there was just you just keep you just keep going because that's survival and that's what had to be done then yeah now obviously that's an extreme act of violence out of very, you know, challenging and disturbing time period in society. But I think the parallels of a little bit of what we're going through today as a nation is with just such deep levels of polarization of people having a lot of different, which I don't think polarization itself is a bad thing. It's a lack of civility. Maybe we're seeing like a lack of sort of friendly debate or being

willing to challenge each other's ideas. And so we are in a place where the world, especially with some of the extreme that can be out there amplified through social media is we're in a place where people are sort of constantly in sort of fight or flight. Yeah. And with the civilly lost, food seems like an opportunity to even get people to bridge on something so fundamental and truly get back to breaking bread together. I think that's exactly the message I'm trying to share is we can easily get caught up in our own emotions when we're doing something online when we're trying to express what

we're angry about or what we're upset about. And great, it's an outlet. Go for it if that, if that works for you. But don't forget that the real value is going to be with people you're going to get to know and build deep relationships with. So be at home, cook together, hang out together, talk together, talk, talk in real life with your friends and build friendships. And, you know, one of the things about COVID was really difficult was, of course, it was imploded for our social lives. But I found what during COVID, it was actually pretty valuable to offer to a small group of people,

we call it a COVID bubble. Let's actually, let's choose to be together. And it was almost like college where you're kind of structurally now hanging out with the same group of people for two years and actually ended up building some deep relationships out of that. And again, the lesson there is spend more time with your friends, spend more time with your families. And food cooking together or cooking for your friends is just one of the best ways to do it.

So just getting people to cook more together, that's obviously a big step. But another area that you guys cared a lot about, especially with the Boulder influence, was actually the quality of the food. And you chatted about that a little bit. You know, the kitchen was one of the first places that actually had and was raising some of its own animals. It was a little controversial at the time, right? But it showed this big step, and I'll let you sort of talk about it, of actually deepening the

connection of where our food comes from. And if somebody eats meat, of course, understanding the importance of, you know, that there's actually an animal behind it. We want to get away from the one extreme, which is factory farming. Right. But you really are disconnected. You're completely disconnected. It's bad for the animals, bad for the environment, bad, you know, generally all around,

except for being able to produce cheap food for individuals. Talk a little about that. Yeah, that was actually a funny one. So we were both best friends and biggest enemies of our vegetarian friends and vegan friends. The idea actually came from some of our vegetarian friends who were saying, our customers who were saying people should eat less meat. They're disconnected from their animals. And so, okay, well, let's live up to that.

Let's start raising our own animals and see how that affects us as chefs. And so we actually started raising animals. And we raised pigs. We raised lamb and we, they were, they were, they were, they were, we, we had like a beautiful relationship with them. We actually named them, we named these two pigs, rhubarb and custard. We named our two lambs, Nessie and Bessie. And then the choice had to come. Are we going to, are we going to slaughter them and eat them?

And it was actually quite a big thing for us to deal with. But we did decide to do it. And we took maybe a step too far, which we no longer do. But we actually put the name of the animal on the menu. Sounds like a Portlandy episode. Yeah, right. Exactly. It is like that.

And so we put, the lambs were Nessie and Bessie. Instead of putting lamb with cuscus, we put Nessie and Bessie with cuskos. And man, we upset a lot of our vegetarian friends then. But then when they reached out to us, because we did have good relationships with, in fact, we were still considered one of the best vegetarian restaurants. I'm sorry, restaurants if you're vegetarian in Boulder, we just also serve animal protein. But we talked to them and said, actually, you challenged us to build a better connection with our guests and the food. This is the best way we could do it.

And so if people want to eat lamb with cuscus, they should know that an animal gave their life up for this. And, you know, when we got to them, we got them to that point, they actually became our biggest fans. And they started to share the story in a positive way that, yeah, this is a restaurant that really stands for what it believes in. So we did pull it back. We don't do that anymore. But I think it's just what's wonderful about Boulder is it's a wonderful place where people really are connected to nature. They're connected to where their food comes from. And so we now have a restaurant in Denver.

We're opening one in Austin. We have a restaurant in Chicago. We are expanding it and extending the philosophy out there. It is just Boulder is one of those places where you could do this kind of experimenting. and have fun with it. Well, you were also experimenting with, you know, recipes at the time and like what are favorites that are there. Talk about some of the ones that you decided to incorporate into the book.

Yeah, I mean, so because we change our menu all the time, we're seasonal, farm-to-table American shared plates. We literally have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of recipes and over 20 years. And so I wanted to pick the 100 recipes that I knew were great, but I also knew people would love to cook at home. So one of my favorites is a simple tomato soup. It's the best tomato soup recipe I've ever found, and it is the simplest recipe. It's just a particular kind of tomato with some onions and a little bit of butter, a little bit of cream, and you're done. And it's a recipe that you can keep with you for the rest of your life. That is one of the more simple ones.

There's another one which is a carrot recipe. Like I said, even though we are not a vegetarian restaurant we are we're very proud of our vegetables and we are absolutely a plant forward plant forward exactly and so our carrots are maybe one of the best things that entire book even though they're just carrots and the humble carrot is very seldom a great dish and in our in our restaurant it's the dish you do not leave the restaurant without having that having that dish on is one of the shared shared items so that's another one I'd call out and then of course roast chicken which is my my personal favorite is in there. And all of these recipes are fun to cook.

They're fun to cook with your friends, fun to cook with your family, and they come out really well. So it's important. Oftentimes the cookbooks, you don't quite know how they're supposed to come out. You don't quite know whether you've done it right or not. And these recipes are more about,

give it a try, this kind of food you're going to cook more than once. You might get a little more salt, a little more salt, a little more pepper. But at the end of the day, they're very straightforward recipes. And they're surprisingly simple and they are surprisingly delicious. Well, coming back to the restaurant and food philosophy, one of the key things that you guys had been early on was the conversation around how it's not just about how food and better food is good for you. And we are in a crisis right now.

We have 88% of Americans not metabolically healthy. We have obesity rates. We have kids as high as 75%, 78% processed food, ultra-proseless food. ultra-processed food as a makeup of their diet. But then there's also the question of, is the food that you're consuming? Is it actually good for the planet? And there's been a lot of debates over that for a long time. And then the regenerative movement came in, which you've been a champion of.

Can you talk about how you discovered regenerative, which I'm sure was pretty early on, and why that became something that you wanted to champion? Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, let me just say what regenerative is considered to be, because I think that is one of the, um, the, um, the, regenerative is a term that could be considered, could be interpreted in different ways. So you want to make sure you have no till, so you're not tearing up the soil, and so you're letting the carbon stay in that. That's good for the climate. You want to make sure you have animals on the

land. Otherwise, you're not really regenerating the soil with manure, and that comes back to animal protein, and now what do you do with the animals if you're going to be regenerative. There is debate about whether you have to be organic or not. I think that you can be regenerative and not be organic, but frankly, let's try and be organic. There's also this concept called rotational grazing where you're actually moving the animals around instead of them being on one plot.

And so this is a, at the end of the day, it's about how do you make the soil better than you left it? And it's really a soil conversation. Now, when you have better soil, you have better vegetables. And when you have better soil, your animals, which will eat the grass or the feed will be better as well. So you do end up with better products. But it's regenerative farming to me is a no-brainer. Any farmer that can do it at a certain scale, at a certain scale, it's a no-brainer.

You get to these very, very big mega farms, I'm still trying to figure out how regenerative can can be applied there, although there are, I think there's one at 10,000 acres, which is really a mega farm. So it can be done. But the more as a consumer, if you see that as a label, it's something for you to support. It is people still learning how to get the price down, but it is absolutely the best way to support yourself and the planet. And so contrast to kind of the current status quo, what's the danger if we continue to have these megafarms as a primary way that we extract nutrients from the earth. You know, it's really is the word is extractive.

You know, it's, we've gotten to a point where we, we, we, there, there, there's a, there's a, there's so many examples of a regenerative farm right next to a industrial farm where the, the, the regenerative farm will just be filled with, with natural, with natural growth, whether it's trees on the side or it's the actual food itself that's growing, and then you'll be right next to it, and it'll just be dirt, literally just empty soil. And it's not a soil with life, and it's just, it comes, you're able to grow something there by putting artificial fertilizers in there. You're able to grow something there by putting GMO corn in there, but really nothing else will grow there. And unfortunately, we have this subsidy system in America where, with all your due respect to farmers,

I want them to be supported by the government, but they're currently supported only if they grow these specific crops. And so if you grow corn in a specific way, you get supported by the government. So you're really not motivated to change. And that means that we're going to find more uses for corn. We've done corn syrup everywhere, which makes a big ingredient in this processed food. We've even said, well, we've run out of things to do even in processed food. Let's make ethanol, which is a complete waste of time.

It takes an oil of petroleum fossil fuel to make a gallon. It takes a gallon of petroleum fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol. And you're using up corn in the process that we could be used for growing other things. So actually you're just taking up farmland without any benefit, except that it does improve the subsidies to the farmers. And I'm like, come on, this has just got to be a bad way to do this. So I believe right now 25 million acres of land, which is basically the amount of growing land we have in California

is used across the country for growing ethanol. So it's not just processed food. We just continue to, we know how to grow food, or we know how to grow corn so well. And the government has continued those subsidies that we just keep trying to find new things to do with it. One of that is processed food where if you can find a way to shove corn into some burger

or some fast food item, the government will literally subsidize it. And that's the driver of our major driver of obesity epidemic. One of the things that's going on in the world of wellness, and it's been going on there for a while, the world of health, is that you have some people that have very strong opinions that, oh, we just need to go back to how things were. We need to go kind of back in time.

And it's all the technology, the GMOs, the innovation, you know, the other things like that that are been needed to get us to where we are so far, but individuals who feel like largely they're advocating for us to go backwards in a way. And then there's a small but growing group of individuals that are actually straddling two worlds. And I think of you as one of those individuals where both the deep explanation of how, listen, getting our hands back into the ground, if you can, putting our feet back into ground, having more experience of the land, knowing where our food comes from, cooking more, which is what this book is all about, but also being a little bit of a,

techno-optimists. Where can technology in different forms be actually things to help us move forward and make these things more accessible to people, right? Yeah. That's kind of how I see you. Do you see yourself? I like that. I mean, I will say I do focus on getting kids for like in our nonprofit big green. We work on getting kids and Americans growing food again. But we've really worked on very innovative ways, technology, or for argument's sake, very innovative ways to to figure out how to determine which nonprofits should receive grants to help their community grow. food. I even dabbled in in blockchain for a little bit. It's like, oh, we have now trusted ways for people to vote on where funding should go. And using technology, we now have 150 nonprofits we

support. But at the end of the day, it is about getting kids and their parents, their hands in the soil. Let's use technology. So I'm really very much a techno optimist. What I do find, though, is there's an idolization of technology that can be unhealthy. where people say technology is the solution for everything. And actually, you know, it's not always. You know, or an innovation may not be even seen as technology. Innovation might be, let's redesign our week and spend more time at home with a family. That doesn't sound like technology, but it's an innovation.

And I think that we can still innovate our ways to a healthier, happier life. We can learn from research, but some of that research may not point us in the direction of an iPhone or some more stereotypical technological invention. I like that. We're looking to innovate. It's not necessarily we're looking for technology. Technology can be a part of that innovation. We're looking to innovate.

So as a family, if somebody's listening today, and maybe you're only cooking a couple times a week, but you want to do it more often, right? What is something that you can learn from somebody else that could help your family innovate, where not only do you get that meaningful connection that comes from cooking, but actually is something that you look

forward to. Are there any tips that you have? You know, you have kids. Yeah. You're married. Yeah. I've four kids. Four kids. Anything that you've seen and you have a busy life, you're involved with a lot of different businesses and companies. What have you seen have been innovative ways to make this a no-brainer for you and your family? Yeah. I mean, one of the things we've done is we have, I'll use the word innovation, we have innovated by saying, we're going to sit down at our table and we're going to all just say what we're grateful for at dinner. And once that gratitude is done, you don't have to stay at the table. So, for example, we have kids who are now over the age of 20, can't tell them what to do. Whereas my younger

kids, I can tell them what to do. But at the end of the day, they want their freedom. And we started to do that. And we sat around the table. We said, we were grateful for the day. And the food is there. And in the beginning, they would sort of take an opportunity for that freedom. And they would just have a quick bite and then they would leave the table. And nowadays, that never happens. You know, we just said, now that we've created a container, let's all sit down and connect for a little bit, they do sit down and we sometimes we'll talk for an hour and a half. Sometimes it is a busy day and people need to, you know, leave the table soon. It's no pressure, no obligation, just let's all have the intention to be, to sit together. So I think it's just

about not being too hard on yourself either or even on your family and friends. Just like, not an obligation. Let's just make this nice and make this great. And not take it personally. If it doesn't work every time, that I think is an innovation. It's like you can actually make it easier. So you took the pressure off your kids and now your kids want to stick around. They actually hold me accountable. I'll have a busy day and they're like, where are you? Come on. We're supposed to sit down. I'm sorry, sorry, I'm here. I want to come back to the book for a second. Are there a handful of recipes or one or two that are your personal favorites over the year? I already mentioned the chicken.

Yeah, sure. That's something that you've been making since you were younger. Absolutely. Right. Is there another recipe that is like, even if it's, in fact, maybe I might even push you a little bit to say, like, how about some indulgences? Yep. Right.

We talk a lot about this podcast that isn't about not having indulgences. It's about having the base of your diet is, you know, minimally processed, whole foods, et cetera. Then you can go crazy every once in a while if you want to. So is there an indulgence that you fought for to get into the book? So, yeah, I mean, actually, I got to say, I got to say bring Quebec to French fries. So coming back to my first experience cooking when I literally threw up from my own recipe, now I've really perfected the French fry recipe.

And it's a three-day recipe. So it really is an indulgence. You start with peeling potatoes and cutting them into a French-fright shape on day one. You leave them overnight in water and it pulls the starch out of it. And then you fry them in low temperature oil, not too low, but low enough to cook them. And then you put them in the fridge overnight, and then you cook them on the third day to order to your family or your friends, or in this case, the restaurant.

And they come out just perfectly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. And then actually, for the final indulgent, I tossed them in garlic butter. It is fantastic. Sounds great. Okay, here's the big question though. What oil are you recommending?

Oh, great question. Great question. Great question. Or can they use an air fryer? Do they use oil? And if so, what oil are they using? Yeah, so we actually, we have this debate in our restaurant right now, as seed oils are major discussion point. Right, big topic. Big topic. And so we are, we've looked at beef tallow, which is using animal fats.

We think that actually is the best flavor, but we'll make a lot of people happy. But a lot of the people who are against seed oils are also vegetarian or vegan. So that doesn't work for them. And so we're exploring different, different oils. there's obviously olive oil, there's avocado oil, there are others out there to use. I would say we haven't really come up with our answer right now. So what's great about a cookbook is you can use any of the above because you're choosing at home to choose any oil you want. And I think that while I would say I have some, I would argue my favorite is actually

beef tallow. I don't think that's going to fly with most people at home. but don't worry about it. Just at the end of the day, you're cooking your French fries and the oil that you want. Do the one that works best for you. Yeah.

There's a lot of companies innovating in this space as well. Totally. So it's very, you know, it's exciting to see different solutions that are there. Yeah, we're all trying to do what's great for taste and flavor

and for taste and health. Yeah, absolutely. And I think on the health side, I think especially if you're deep frying, you've probably got to skew more towards beef tallow, avocado oil, things like that. Yeah.

I think there's a company called Zero Acre. I actually, I have it at my house zero. You're tasting it out right now. Yeah, that's great. Well, let us know how it turns out. Is there, coming back to the restaurant, which is really where everything got started over here and all this innovation, is there any things that, you know, you had come in from tech, right? Had the resources to be able to say, like, let's do this the right way.

Is there any area that you came in maybe a little bit too ambitious? the way that your brother talks about how the Model X doors was an exercise in hubris, right? Like the wing doors that flop up on the side. Is there anything that you ended up having to dial back on to make a commercially viable restaurant, right? You know, there's nothing more humble than I can imagine like running a restaurant. It's such a difficult business.

Absolutely. And 20 years in. Right, 20 years in. You've got to do something that's anything that you change your mind on. Well, I will say that there's been one thing that that has worked in our favor as has been, technology has improved a lot. And so all of those farmers that I mentioned, if they're still around or new farmers that have taken their place, it's not a big deal now to use technology. And so what actually has been great, and I think we might have run out of steam

because in 20 years a long time to constantly work with these farmers on a daily basis. But as we work with them, the distribution company started to, you know, they don't want to lose the business. They want to see if they can help. They also saw the farmers get online. And we started to see them one after the other join on to these larger distribution companies and actually using software that enabled for them to participate, for the distribution companies to participate. So what I've seen over the 20 years is nowadays we have a restaurant in Denver, Chicago, we're opening one in Austin, we have one in Boulder. We are able to pick very high quality farmers using technology today that is

it simply would not have been possible for us to scale outside of our outside of our hometown because to do that again in each city would have would have been impossible. So I would say that thank goodness one of the things we probably would have had to pull back on would have been you know our sourcing just as we grew but I'm glad to say that the the farmers and the distribution companies have have kind of picked up the the just basically come along for the ride. And so I'm glad to say, like, most restaurants, if you're at a good restaurant, they should,

they should know where their food is coming from. They're able to do it now using larger distribution companies. I would love to ask you about your own health. You know, you are an eater, just like people who are listening today. Yeah. Has, have you changed any approaches of yours over the last 20 years, things that you've prioritized more, things that you've deprioritized, as you've learned the 80-20 of like what matters and what doesn't matter? Yeah. I think 80-20 is a great way to look at it, rather than say, can you constantly refine it? Of course she can. I am, my wife, Christiana, is a big food policy expert.

A quick plug for her, she's one of the main chapters in Food Inc. 2.0, talking about different ways you can view the food system. And I think very interesting for anyone who cares about the food system. But having a wife like that has been, I've been really looking at, you know, should I try, reducing my meat consumption or different kinds of meat consumption or should I increase, you know, this regenerative food or otherwise. And what I really have found back to 80-20, although again, there's always ways you can improve is my mom has been a dietitian. She's now retired as a dietitian, but her advice to me is always color on your plate. Like, do you have color on your

plate? If you do, you're getting the vitamins, nutrition, you probably need. And now, If you're working out a lot, okay, maybe you need a bit more protein. Okay, you really want to lose weight. Okay, well, then you definitely need your vegetables for all those nutrition that will keep you healthy. Well, all of those are all well and good. But if I have, what I do is I have three meals a day and I have color on my plate. So if I have breakfast, I love having my eggs with bread. A lot of my friends are like, how can you eat bread?

And I'm like, I like bread. But I also have some spinach with it. And it's good bread. It's not processed bread, but it's good from a local baker. And if you can't get good bread, then maybe you shouldn't have bread. But I think if you can have more freedom to think, like, just make sure there's color on your plate. At lunch, I like to have a salad with some protein.

And then dinner, I don't really think too much about what I eat for dinner. I like, because I'm also eating out, I have the restaurant. And so I want to have the freedom to eat what I. I want. But again, always keeping that 80-20 rule in place. Like, at one glance, is there a color here? If there is, I'm probably eating well. That's great. Coming back to the cookbook, you know, what is your deepest hope for people who are listening today, right? Picking up a copy. Obviously, we have a link in the show notes. The book launch date is. It's March 12th. March 12th. So just around the corner. Your book now. And it'll arrive in your

in your doorstep on March 12th. My deepest hope is really that you try a few these recipes. Give me your feedback. I'm forming a little cooking club for anyone who's in order of the book. I'd love your feedback. I'd love you to enjoy, hopefully, of course, enjoy the food with your friends or your family. And really, it's a delight to get this book out into the world. And what's the cooking club? Like, is that I'm making a recipe and we're sending it in and people are sharing? Is it a formal thing, informal? Yeah. So, go to the website, the kitchen.com, and there's a link there to the cooking club. And it's just a way for me to interact with you back and forth and for you to give feedback,

ideas. And of course, if I'm doing a book signing in your area, you'll get notified. That's incredible. Well, we'll link to all that in the show notes. I bought a bunch of copies myself, so I'm super excited about the book. Kimmelis was great. Thank you for coming on, sharing a little bit about the book, some of the recipes, your origin story. People can follow you online. You're very active. Probably Twitter is the place that you're most active. X is the, yes, ex. Sorry, old habits. Instagram and X. I use both them. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, we'll lead to those. Different different things. Yeah, different vibes. I will say, even though we didn't get into it, I know we want to stick down the cookbook. I love, you know, you engaging on, you know, the political

landscape, you know, which is, X is a great opportunity to, friendly debates and discussions and things like that. And you have a really, a lot of really interesting thoughts that are there and you amplify a lot of interesting messages that I think that are important part of our dialogue. I think I know you care about food. And it's good to care about that because my hope for also, you know, we talked about your book, is that people like you are making the conversation around food. It's bubbling up so that, you know, elected officials are now starting to talk about it. Where previously it was really not really something that was talked about, especially if you talk about on a

presidential level. Right. So it's good to see it become a national debate, a national conversation, a national dialogue, because if things continue the way they are, we're really headed in a bad position place. Not only will we not be cooking, but our survival as a species is truly at risk if we don't get our chronic disease. Also, our health as a species. We might live for a certain amount of time. Let's not say we'd live longer. I doubt we would with that kind of food, but we're certainly not going to live well. And so I think that really is a crisis for us to eat a healthier food and also to enjoy how we're eating it. So eating it with our friends and family. Yeah. You said it best. Kimball, thank you again for being on the podcast. Thank you so much

for having me. Hi everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend. Share with a who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This.

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