A Conversation with Kimbal Musk: How His Trauma Led to Helping Fix Our Food System Through Community

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

When you have a different relationship to food that you know that you can grow it, it just changes the psychological fear of hunger. And that is really powerful. It improves your nutrition security. It also improves your mental health. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark.

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Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy.

I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and this is a place for conversations that matter. Now, there are a few things in life that bring me as much joy as cooking in community with friends and family, which is why I'm so excited about today's conversation with my friend Kimbal Musk. Now, Kimbal is the co-founder of the Kitchen, an American bistro with restaurant locations in Boulder, Denver, Chicago, and soon Austin. I've been there, it is damn good. The food is so yummy, I can't even believe it. And it's good for you too. Now marking its 20th anniversary, the Kitchen serves thoughtfully sourced seasonal American shared plates, which is my favorite kind of eating shared plates with global influences. Kimbal Musk is also the co-founder of Big Green, a philanthropic organization devoted to getting Every American growing food. His personal mission is to empower and invest in the next generation who are building a healthier, happier future. The Wall Street Journal has called him a cheerful crusader for real food. He's a good friend. He definitely is cheerful. His laugh is infectious and it's quite amazing to be with him. And the Guardian has lauded how he takes the tech entrepreneur ethos and applies it to food. Musk has been named a global social entrepreneur by the World Economic Forum. He currently sits on the board of Tesla. and formerly served on the board of Chipotle Mexican Grill and SpaceX. Now we begin our conversation exploring Kimball's journey with food and the ways we've each experienced profound community through shared meals, particularly in times of navigating some of life's most difficult moments like 9/11 or for me it was the Haiti earthquake. Kimball shares his experience feeding fighter fighters in New York City directly after the 9/11 attacks and how it strengthened his understanding the community is truly medicine. He fed those firefighters and it really changed him and led him to actually build what he's doing today. We discussed the loneliness epidemic and additional challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has had in our society. We talk about also the reciprocal relationships that Kimball has created with farmers in his area in an effort toward zero food waste. So he basically networks all the small local farmers, connects them to restaurants, and he explains how he does that because it's a model for a new food system. And Kimball also shares the life altering message he received following a devastating spinal injury that nearly left him paralyzed but woke him up to a vision that.

Led to a better world.

We're going to talk about that in the podcast. It's quite amazing. Finally, we discussed the work Kimball is doing in schools to develop children's exposure to and experience growing their own food and then cooking it and eating it. And it's a whole nutritional curriculum. It's really changing the way school food is, which is really needed. Kimball offers a few practical tips for getting started in the kitchen, and we discussed the value and importance of shared family meals. And now, let's dive into my conversation with Kimball Musk.

Welcome to the Dr. Pharmacy podcast. Kimball, it's great to have you back. We had you in a while back, maybe at the beginning of the podcast, talking about Big Green and the work you've done. We're going to get deeper in some of the stuff you're doing today. It's quite amazing. You're coming out with a brand new cookbook, which I love. It's called the Kitchen. I've been to this restaurant that it's sort of named after, which is in Boulder, Colorado, and it's the most delicious, yummy, healthy, but also delicious, satisfying food. So it's not leading with health, but it's actually healthy just by default because you're using all these amazing ingredients. So it's just, it's such a special place and it's a place where we gather. So often I, I, we're friends and go hang out in your house, and we're always hanging around the kitchen, and it's, it's a place where community builds and where people talk about their life and just hang out. And it's kind of like the fabric of, of our life, and we've often you know, in our modern society, we've kind of lost that. And people are, I would say, disintermediated from their kitchen by the food industry. And your book is such an invitation to go back in the kitchen and to cook. So it's really great that you publish this book and everybody definitely should get a copy. You know, you have an interesting background, Campbell.

You were- you- know, before we dive in there, I just want to reflect on how beautiful it was to spend time with you in Massachusetts during COVID For the audience, Mark invited us and a few friends to go through his full medical experience, but of course it's COVID, so we can't go anywhere, but we can go to his house.

We detoxed at the house.

Yeah, and we did everything at the house and we cooked all together in the kitchen and we had beautiful meals. Your food is fantastic. And we connected. That's like you were saying, we We, especially with the pandemic, we kind of lost even what we had, this very comfortable, easy way to connect, which is just be in the kitchen. And I recall, it was probably six days and we just, we ate together, we laughed together, we talked, we, we were together that long.

I hiked in the rain. Remember that hike in the rain for like three hours?

Yes, exactly. And then also to that incredible or to pool, lake or whatever that was.

Yeah, it was a quarry.

Yeah, I mean incredible. What an incredible experience. I just want to thank you for that. And my best memories are the kitchen and the food and just connecting with people. And that's really what this book's about. It's about getting people to remember the power of community, the power of connecting with your friends and family, use food, it's meditative, but mostly it's connecting with your family and your friends.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, when you think of people's houses, no matter how big their house is, if they're having a party, everybody's.

Crammed into the kitchen. Where's the kitchen?

I want to go there and hang out. Exactly. And your kitchen is always filled with the most amazing food. It's really a treat to be there. So, you've got an interesting background, Kimble, because you were an entrepreneur. You were involved in PayPal early on, and then you decided you wanted to get into food, and you became a restaurateur, you're a philanthropist doing amazing things in the space of food and education for kids, particularly around healthy food and gardening. Your basic mission seems to be putting food on the table in America that's real healthy food and getting everybody access. So how did you go from being like a tech entrepreneur in the 90s to being so passionate about nutrition? What got you on fire about this?

I've had such an interesting journey with food. I grew up as a kid cooking. So my mom, who is wonderful and she's a great mom, but she's self-described a very bad cook.

And so I- But she's a nutritionist, right?

Nutritionist. I was actually a doctorate in dietetics, like real science level, working in hospital wards, and unfortunately with our diabetes epidemic, that really is tearing a lot of our communities apart. So, I grew up with a very much, what's the right word, brown bread and plain yogurt kind of lifestyle. And as a kid, you're like, come on, this is ridiculous. The other thing she would do is she would cook a boiled squash and she loved it. And like, this is for a kid, is the worst thing you can eat.

She didn't make it too sexy to eat healthy, is what you're saying.

No, no. so she said, you know, and I was young, I was 11 or 12, and she said, okay, you want to cook? I mean, let's go to the grocery store, get whatever you want, cook. And I, the first thing I asked the butcher for was a chicken. And I said, how do I cook it? And he said something which is really the same instructions that I've kept my whole life is you put salt and pepper on it, some olive oil, just rub it around, and you put it in a hot oven for one hour. and back then, you know, the temperatures and things were not really that good, but it's like a 400 degree oven for an hour. And pretty much that's the recipe. Now, in our cookbook, we have all these delicious things. You add lemon, you add some herbs, you add some garlic. I mean, of course, you can make it better, but, but the, the fundamental recipe I did when I was so young, and it came out so well, and it was like a, you know, I think that matters a lot when you cook, you know, does your first dish come out well? And not only did it taste good, but what was beautiful about it was my mom and my brother and my sister, they're very, very busy, they're very in their head, and I am as well, but when I cook, I'm kind of in my body, I'm able to be present. Again, it's like a meditative thing for me. I didn't really realize, I didn't even know the word meditation, I just kind of did it as a way to to calm myself at the end of the day. And then we would all sit down and we'd all just eat and we would talk. How beautiful is that? And something I've kept with me forever. So whether I'm cooking for my kids or my wife or my family or my brother or sister, it's, it's, it's, it's a gift that I, that I, I love to cook for, for folks, and it's a gift to me as well. It's a gift to me really more than anyone else because I get to, I get to sit out and connect.

Yeah, you know, Kim, it's so true what you're saying is that we often think of cooking as a chore. We've been told that you should leave the cooking to us, right? You deserve a break today, quote unquote, from McDonald's.

Yeah, exactly.

And we've kind of taken something that was just the heart of the family and the community and our lives and kind of put it aside. And so most people are not eating food that they cook at home. They're eating food that came from a factory. They're not eating processed food with their families.

They're not eating. It's the cause for our epidemic is the processed food. You can cook simple meals that can be done in 10 minutes. In fact, we have a few of those in our cookbook. But, I mean, I'll even do my scrambled eggs recipe for two minutes and it's meditative. It's literally two minutes. There isn't a faster way to have breakfast. You couldn't stand in line at Starbucks for that amount of time. Exactly. and it's beautiful. Actually, in your honor this morning, because you and I have talked about gluten in the past, is I'm going to work on a tortilla recipe, kind of like a Weber's Rancheros recipe.

Yeah, yeah.

And I came up with a trick that I think would be fun to share is for the tortillas, you know, you get them out of the fridge, they're cold. What a lot of people do is they'll kind of warm them on a pan or put them in the oven. What I did was I put them directly on the gas flame. Ah, yeah. And it actually takes a moment for even to cause, maybe even 30 seconds for it to cause it to burn. So like within like 15 seconds to 20, just flip it and then another 15 seconds and you're done. Yeah.

And so I love putting on a fire.

It's hard for me to learn a new recipe. That's great.

I'm glad you heard that. I'm glad you heard it.

Thank you very much.

I don't know if that's gonna be a habit or not, but we'll see. Well, you know, it actually tastes good.

I'm all about, does it taste good? That was pretty good.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, no, it's just, it's, what you're saying is so important. And the beauty of your cookbook, it's called the Kitchen, literally the Kitchen, is that it invites people back in the kitchen where we've been shoved out by the food industry and invites us to think about this as a joy and a pleasure, as you said, a meditation, as a way to connect with family and friends. You know, I have the same way.

To use, I love to cook and I love to cook for people. so probably. Yeah, it was clear when we were with you, you, you love it. I mean, and your, the food, your, especially your veg, you're so vegetable for it. Wow. Magical flavors coming out of these vegetables that, that, I mean, and we do the same with the kitchen, the vegetable recipes in our cookbook.

They might actually be the best recipes of the whole book. I mean, your carrots at, yeah, the carrots are so damn good.

They're like a, they're roasted and then, you know, with an Urfa dressing, which is a dressing from the Middle East and it's just so unusual and it is so good.

Are you using carrots? That's not a main dish, but it's actually so good.

Exactly. We have our waiters come and they'll literally say, we know no one orders carrots normally. You have to order the carrots. It's like a conversation at every table.

It's really true. It's really true. They're so good. and so you're basically taking things that are ordinary and making them extraordinary and you're doing in ways that are simple, that are easy.

Beautiful ingredients. I mean, you give some good carrots. The flavors are so wonderful and there's a sweetness to it. There's a beautiful caramelization that happens. And so it is also ingredients driven, as you know. And for folks who go, Whole Foods, of course, is fine, but go to the farmer's market. What's fun about a farmer's market is the carrots are different per farm. Like one farm will have a slightly different style of a different seed even, and you can play with carrots in ways that are more fun than the same carrot every time. And not that the same carrot every time doesn't work, but kind of cool to go and get it from your farmer's market.

That's true. Yeah, I mean, it kind of, your whole approach reminds me of, you know, when I was in the blue zones in Sardinia and in Icaria, where food was so central to their life. And they grew it, they cooked together, and they ate together. And it was a big event when you had lunch or dinner. It was like a big event, the family would get together, the community would get together. And it was so beautiful. And that's really what you're inspiring us to do. And I think maybe you could share a little bit about the story that happened to you in 2001 and 9/11 when you were living in New York City. and you heard the plane hitting the building and it sort of was a powerful thing and what you did as a result of that to help the firefighters and what that changed.

Yeah, so my story was I was a tech entrepreneur. I sold it in my company 99, remained an investor in PayPal and stuff, but I wasn't passionate about tech and I was passionate about food. I'd grown up cooking food and and I went to the French Culinary Institute, which is a very intense old school, you know, screaming at you, I mean literally like this is their teaching technique. It's a Gordon Ramsay on steroids. He actually probably learned from schools like this, so he knows he was trained that way. And so I graduated just before 9/11 and of course, not sure what I was gonna do after cooking school. But I woke up on Tuesday morning, as I still remember it very clearly, to the strange sound. And I was down by Chambers and Broadway, very close to the World Trade Center. And then the doorbell was ringing from the doorman, old New York, you're in these small buildings and there's a doorman there. And he starts ringing the bell and I answer it and he just says, a plane's hit the building, a plane's hit the building, a plane's hit the building. and I'm in that sort of New York zone of like, some idiot just flew a plane in a building. And so I kind of ignore it. And I take a shower and I tell my wife at the time, I'm gonna go get some coffee. And so I do my routine. I go down the elevator and I go to the deli across the road. I get out of the elevator and the doorman says, another plane hit the building, another plane hit the building. And I still don't quite get it. And of course, you're in tall buildings, you can't see the World Trade Center at this point. and there wasn't any panic. In fact, I went across to the deli and there were like 30 people in line. And I thought, that's a bit strange. That's not normal behavior. This is a normal New York deli. And I feel like, you know, in retrospect, people didn't know what to do. So they just kind of.

So they got coffee.

And just like exactly this, but it just felt weird. But then as I was paying for my coffee, over the radio that we heard the Pentagon got hit. And that is when it just, the whole body just kind of just dropped and you're oh, oh shit, we are under attack. And everyone just started running. You don't even know which way to run because you don't know what's going on, right? And so we started to see people running uptown. I wouldn't grab my wife. and we made it to Canal Street by the time the first one fell. And the, again, still not knowing which building fell, but something big was going on. The dust cloud that came and stopped about half a block before Canal was like a white wall of dust. And people were coming out of that in cars or holding onto the sides of cars just to get out of the dust cloud. They were covered in white paste of dust. And I can only imagine, we were part of the health check, we were in the zone where we were required by law to do a health check every year by the government to check.

The pollution, the toxins that came in.

Yeah, it checked your lung effect on your lungs and it did affect a lot of people. Thankfully we missed that dust cloud by half a block. It was, it would have been a life changing from a health perspective. We're very grateful for that. And then we kept running, we went to Union Square and then when I turned around and I could see the, for the first time, I could see the World Trade Center as well, in that case, one World Trade Center. And you just look and stare and you're like, what was something missing? Oh yeah, there's a World Trade, one of them's gone. And then as I'm looking, the second one just starts to fall in slow motion. and you just can't believe it. It was like reality breaking. It just isn't possible in your world.

The whole world changes in a moment, right?

The whole world changes in a moment. And your whole view on the world, your whole view on what is a grounded reality, all of that is gone. And so we got to my mom's place on 22nd of Broadway. and she had invited anyone who needed help to stay there. So we had about eight or nine people in this small apartment. And it was good, actually. We had, like, a little. I didn't know. I said, I knew my mom, but I didn't know the others. It was good. We had a little, little kind of group therapy, like, what's going on here? Oh, yeah. I remember Elon calling and saying, get out of there. Just get out. Just get out because he was so freaked out and. and something just said to me, no, I don't want to leave. You know, this is a strange, illogical thought to say, no, I know that I'm in danger. We don't know what's coming next. But this is my home. I'm not going to leave. So a few hours later, we get a call from the city. My mom was quite well known at the time for dietetics. I mean, and she was asked if she wanted to volunteer for the firefighters to cook. and they were just kind of calling, can you imagine there's a million people trying to volunteer? And she says, you know, I can't cook but my son just got a cooking degree and he can. And so I says, so she volunteered you.

I know.

So, I mean, it's amazing twist of fate that I also had a security pass because they give it to anyone who was below Canal Street because you live down there. And so, after about, I don't know, seven to ten days, they allowed me to come down back into my home. And I, for six weeks, I cooked for the firefighters, went to this restaurant called Boulet and it was blown out.

Oh, Boulet, yeah. David Boulet is a good friend. He's a great, yeah.

Great. And now, of course, not here, not there anymore, but it's, but, blown completely destroyed in the front of the restaurant, but the back of house and the basement, was a huge kitchen. And so we used that kitchen to cook. And I started peeling potatoes. I was completely bottom of the rung, but that was fine. You know, I just was honored to be there. And the chefs who were rotating in and out would do two or three days at a time. And I just kept, I was there every day. And it was a wonderful way to process the trauma in a sense. Peeling potatoes doesn't sound good, but actually when you're in that zone, It's perfect. And then I work my way up to pasta station and then saute. And eventually, because I was just there all the time, I was the guy that would drive the cooler of food and an ATV down to ground zero. And that it was a makeshift gymnasium, sorry, gymnasium that had turned into a cafeteria. And so we take the food and we would, we'd be in the, in this room and the, firefighters would come in from literally these giant piles of metal that were still melting. You could smell the burning, the melting. In weeks later, it's just, I'll never forget that smell. I'll never forget that smell. It was just horrible. They'd come out of it and they'd be in these shells and they'd take these shells off which were covered in dust and then they'd have this kind of gray look about them and we would feed them I think the best food they've ever had. And we put so much love into it. Yeah.

Bela, for those who don't know, is the number one restaurant in New York for like a decade or 20 years.

Yeah.

At the time. And it was like. It was like, it was no longer.

Because of that, but at the time. Yes, exactly. Yeah. But. But the. It was. It was truly the best chefs in the world cooking the food, and I was there to help, and I was cooking as well. And, as I said, I got to honor to work my way up. But the most beautiful thing was actually just watching how food would change their energy and they would be completely quiet. We would feed them this beautiful food and then they would slowly start coming to life. And it was about a 45-minute break and you could see by the minute 20 they'd have a little energy and then 25 and then, and then by the end of that 45-minute break they were talking and laughing and Connecting and then they would just put their their shells back on and they'd go right back out to dig through these piles of metal to help save American lives. It was truly the greatest honor of my life to be part of that. It was then that I was like, you know, I had this, the sense of community was so incredible, still so beautiful. I was like, you know, I've been a tech entrepreneur, I've got a cooking degree, I know what I'm doing, I love food, I was afraid that food would become like a, would get ruined for me if I did a business, but I think I was also insecure about opening a restaurant because that's what I love. So I said, you know what, I'm going to do it now. I have no excuse, I know how much I'm going to love this. So my wife and I, we drove around the US, We went to cities that were closer to the west side of the US because I had a lot of work in the Bay Area. So I just wanted an easier commute. So it was a Jackson Hole, Boulder, Denver, down to Santa Fe and then all the way up the west coast in the month of February. Because February is easy to be nice in any month, but pretty hard to be nice in February. And even though Boulder, it gets cold in February, it's this beautiful crisp cold. and it's also a mountain town, so I grew up at a higher elevation and so I resonated with that, with the feeling of the air and so it's also a great restaurant town. I think it's one of the best restaurant towns. It actually has the same restaurants per capita as New York City. It really is a buzzing.

Really?

Really amazing.

I don't know because I just go to your restaurant when I'm there.

Or your kitchen.

Or your actual kitchen. The kitchen or your kitchen.

Am I exactly? and it's wonderful. So we opened the kitchen, but the reason I got into healthy food and sourcing, I would say, well, the healthy came from my mom, but the sourcing came from Hugo, my co-founder. So Jen helped with the design. Hugo was my co-founder and chef, and he was this great chef that I was walking down the street, but one week into moving to Boulder and my dog came off the leash, went up to this guy and he was English and I'm South African and we just bonded a little bit over that. But then he said he's just taking on this, the chef position and I'm, I said, I'm here to open a restaurant. And so he offered to have me work for him in ten dollars an hour. And I did that for a year.

And I love that going from selling in PayPal to 10 bucks an hour.

And honestly, it was Awesome. I had such a good time and I learned so much from him because there's a difference between New York and his style. His style is very Italian, very much about ingredients, very much what's the least amount of things we can do to this food to make the flavors come out. And French cooking is more of a six hour process where you really are, you know, what's the getting that source correct and, you know, it really is a completely different way of thinking. And the other thing that he brought was this idea of working with farmers directly. And working with farmers directly back then, people didn't use email, they didn't have iPhones. As strange as it sounds, I mean, I come from Silicon Valley and five or six years later, people still were not using email. I just couldn't even understand it. But they're farmers. And so the farmers would so I. But I agreed with. With Hugo because his food was so good that I was like, you know, okay, I'm. I'm gonna go figure this out. And so I got to know a lot of these Farmers. They really trusted Hugo, and so we. They were willing to work with us, but they would. They would come and bring food, and they would drop off, you know, broccoli or. Or carrots or things like that, and. And then they would just leave a paper chit, and we've got. We've got to, like, now find the paper chit, and we've got to put entry into some system, and then we're gonna pay them, or we got to pay them cash, and. and this is really hard. You know, there are systems for this. It's called email. And so one farmer at a time, we got the one email. And I remember one farmer saying to me that, this is in the early 2000s, right? Yeah, 2002 to 2004 when we were opening. So he was just intimidated. I mean, you can imagine, you never put a computer in your house and you've never set it up. He was an older guy. So I went to Best Buy with him and helped him buy a computer. I didn't pay for it, but I helped him buy a computer. Went back to his home. I was like his grandkid, you know, just setting up his modem and his DSL account or whatever and setting up the computer. I was like, okay, now you type in here what your food you have and then we get the message. and then we will send it back to you, yes, please, we'd like it, and then tell us how much it is. By the time you arrive, we are ready to pay you. And it was such a simple thing, but it was a big jump for these farmers. So, I think my, what do you call it, my contribution to the Farm to Table movement, because it was really happening all over the country at that.

Point, was helping- Tech enabling it.

You're not tech enabling it exactly at the simplest level. It was a joy. It was an absolute joy. these farmers were so... because, you know, everyone else is doing it. They just needed someone to help them do it. It wasn't like they were anti-technology. They were like, yeah, this is kind of cool, but it was a little bit like I was... they were my grandparents and I was the kid changing the 000 on the VHS machine. Let's put the clock in there.

Exactly. Well, it's such a great story, Kimball, because Out of tragedy came something beautiful, which was this insight that you love to serve people, that you love to cook for people, that it was a place where people could come together and belong and feel connected and laugh and heal in some way. It's really medicine. I think that's a powerful thing that's turned into your life's work. The cookbook, the Kitchen, which is named after the restaurant in Boulder that you're talking about, is a way for people to get back invited into. You can check it out here. Great. We'll link to it in the show notes.

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You know, I had a similar experience. I went to Haiti after the earthquake and, you know, was just in the most intense situation serving all the wounded and the injured in the hospital and really wasn't thinking about myself at all. And was working 20 hours a day nonstop for weeks. And, you know, and out of that, I also sort of had the Insight that the community was so powerful that came together. to help solve this problem and to help bring relief to the people who are suffering there. And it just was clear to me that the community is medicine, that just as food is medicine, so is community.

Oh my goodness, community is medicine.

Absolutely. And it is maybe one of the most important medicines and that's clearly one of the things in the blue zones that's so important is they're never alone or never isolated. They're always part of the community and we see loneliness being an epidemic. Even the Surgeon General has sort of almost said loneliness is the new smoking in America because they're also- Yeah, there's.

A study, the Harvard study about longevity. And it's the longest running study in the country. It started in the 1930s and they took a wealthy group of, I think it's just boys, and they might add a woman later, but wealthy group of kids on one side and actually kids from the poorer part of town, which you can imagine in Boston, that would be pretty poor. They just started to track them. And these folks are now in their 80s or 90s, and I guess they're in the 1990s at this point. And they went back and looked through all of the things that could have helped them live longer. And of course, these folks grew up not during a time when we have the modern medicine and a lot of new beautiful things that have been happening over the past 10 to 20 years that we do have to learn. And I'm a student of life. I want to constantly learn. But what's so powerful about this was the only thing that was consistent about the ones that lived the longest were people who had deep relationships at the age of 50. Yeah. With their wife, with their friends, with their family. Those deep relationships stayed with them. and they were not lonely. And they wanted to live and they wanted to live a vibrant life with their community. And those blue zones, I was actually just down with Dan Buettner in Costa Rica in one of the blue zones. And it's all about community. It's all about the food there is simple, but it's fresh and it's delicious and it's community that makes you kind of gives you energy, gives you life. And I just love when I wrote this cookbook, I was like, why am I doing this? I know the restaurant's been around for a long time, but really what I've seen over the past few years, especially because of the pandemic, is how much lonelier we are. And we went through a training, unfortunately, to be lonelier through the pandemic. Let's all learn how to watch more TV or let's learn how to play more video games. It's really sad. And now we've come out of it like, oh, we have to untrain ourselves. And so I thought, if I wrote a cookbook that was about community, it's called Cooking for your Community. And it's really a story of what has helped me live a joyful life. And I cook with my kids at least once a day. I just cooked this morning for the family for breakfast. It's when I did the tortillas to I mean it's good by the way. And again, I'm telling you, I'm giving you praise here. That was really good. But it's really about cooking with my family and my friends and I stay connected with them. And I still eat out of course. I love to eat out but I like to eat out with my family and friends. I like to use it to break bread with someone I don't know. Restaurants were wonderful for meeting someone who might be your partner for the rest of your life. The restaurants play a beautiful role It's both, you can cook at home with your family and friends, but also go out and eat with your family and friends. And that's to me is certainly my secret to longevity.

It's so good, Campbell. And one of the things you do is not just bring people in your home or bring people in your restaurant, but you sort of built this network of community in the farmers and the local supply chain and, you know, in a reciprocal way by giving them your compost and they give you their food. And you sort of built this incredible network and provided food in a way that was delicious.

Wonderful farm. One of our favorite Farmers when we were in the early days was, was, was a farmer named Ann cure and with cure farm.

And that's a good name.

Cure.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and it became, it became such a beautiful relationship. We not only would buy food from her because she was just our favorite, one of our favorite humans. And then we also started to raise animals on her farm as well. And it was a powerful way to learn the food system from the perspective of the restaurant. You're ordering food and it arrives and you prepare it. You want it to be the best quality possible. but to learn the perspective of the farmer was another gift that we got. It wasn't just these relationships we got. We got to go out and farm. And it was, we bring our kids out there. I want to give total respect to the farmers because it's a daily, it's a daily hard, it's hard work daily. And you're dealing with weather, with climate change, with weather volatility. It's a tough, tough job. But also, it's beautiful. It's also we got to be on this farm and spend time with Anne and her family and that we really was a gift that we got was to work with these farmers. Nowadays, because of technology, it's really advanced. All of the farmers are online and all of the farmers have iPhones and all the farmers are able to do that. So we're able to source from farmers that are a little bit further away or have a bit more sustainability practices, always thinking first about the quality of the food, then about the animal welfare, how are they treated, and when it comes to vegetables, which is the best farmer for this ingredient or that ingredient. It's really been, it's a 20-year journey now. We've got farmers that have worked with us for two decades is really incredible. Yeah, I mean, one of the things.

That'S great about what you're doing also is that you're sort of demonstrating how you can have a beautiful restaurant that's outside the industrial food system, where you're getting from local farmers, where you're in a reciprocal relationship with them, where you sort of have zero food waste and you sort of bypass the whole industrial food system, which is- yeah, actually, the.

Zero food waste was such a thing, you know, 20 years ago, Hugo drove this as well. He worked at a restaurant called the River Cafe in London, which is, it's just really one of the greatest. Still around, still doing great. One of the top, if not maybe the first farm-to-table restaurant. Chez Panisse was in California, and this one was in London. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so, but, but the problem back in the 70s, the technology was so just wasn't there. So it was just really, really hard to work with farmers and then but those two restaurants did figure it out. Now, fast forward 50 years, those farmers were all on their own technology, but one of the things that still needed was when it comes to zero waste was we had this compost, we had farmers that needed it, but there was a law at the time that did not allow us to give it to the farmers. you know, there's a, there's a fear of food poisoning that if you don't look after properly, it is. And, you know, fair enough. And, but we, but we had a farmer that, that would take it and, but take it, take it on a timely basis, not allow it to, to, to, to get bad. And so, so that happened for a little while. And then, and then another entrepreneur in Boulder, and love Boulder. They came along and said, well, we know this is not allowed, but we know you're doing it. Would you be open to being our first restaurant that we work with? We take the compost and we actually process it right away and we turn it into almost like a soil, but it's not soil, of course, it's based on food, but it's something you turn into the soil and it looks and feels like soil and essentially fertilizes the soil with the compost. So we got that partnership as well early days. and ever since then we've just, we've, you know, we've got our three different, every single garbage can is three. It's, you know, you've got compost, recycling and trash. And we get it down to, you know, one small, for a restaurant that is very busy, we get it down to one small actual piece of trash, like a little bag of trash for every few days because most of what we do is recyclable or composted. yeah.

I mean, it's great. And, you know, what was also great is that you haven't just sort of stayed in a restaurant that you realize that, you know, the food system is broken at a larger scale and that kids are suffering more than anybody. You know, we're seeing 40 of kids or 45 of kids overweight.

Going into kindergartens, 40 to 45 are obese. It's an epidemic.

And we're seeing, you know, just to sort of record a podcast on the effective ultra processed food on mental health, on violence, aggression, behavior issues, ADHD, and, and, you know, you, you decided you wanted to work in a broader way and shift the food, food system in schools. So tell us about what you did with big green and why you started that and why, why it's such an important part of your mission and work in the world.

Yeah. You know, that's another powerful story. I've got a yeah, it's, it's a hard, hard to share. So give me a moment. I think the, when, when the restaurants were, were doing well in the 2000s, I, I started to, to get curious about Tech again and stuff, but I, but I, but I really was not happy. I was genuinely unhappy with, okay, I've made money in Tech. Now my restaurants are successful, and, like, I've gotten into that place that I think a lot of people get into where what am I doing? You know, what, why am I, why am I working so hard on something that I've kind of lost my, my passion for? And I was on a ski hill in 2010 with my, my kids, ages four and six, and I went down one of those children's inner tube runs. So you get on an inner tube, and it sounds fun, but for me, I'm six foot five and, and my kids are kids, they're four feet tall. And it's the same size inner tube. But I wasn't really thinking. And I get on the inner tube, I get to the bottom, and I'm going 35 miles an hour. The tube flips. I land on my head. My head gets pushed straight into my chest. My spine ruptures at C6 and C7. And I'm. I'm paralyzed. I'm just done. And I'm like, what? It's like a blink of an eye. It just was like. blink of an eye. And so they get me to the hospital, they're not moving me, I've got this halo on me and they're just checking and I'm still in shock. I don't know what's going on. The thing about being paralyzed, you don't feel pain. So it's not like you're hurting.

You just can't move.

You don't feel anything. It's as if everything is normal, but it's not normal, you can't move. It's a terrifying awful again, I'm just in shock. So they go do all these tests and, and my brother was with me and my very good friend Antonio was with me and my wife was with me. And so I knew I was in the best, like these guys are gonna, they're gonna call everyone to, to see what, what could be done. And I, so I kind of let myself be in their hands. Meanwhile, I'm just processing and I had, I had honestly I had this voice of God, like, I don't know how else to describe it, this complete clear message that said, you,'re gonna be fine. And when you were fine, you're gonna work to help kids connect to food.

And I was just a download, like, I.

Where is that coming from? Like, I'm like, in fact, I'm having a little discussion. What's going on here? And it was this complete clear voice. over and over and over again, very calm. And meanwhile, I'm in like five car alarm hospital situation. Everyone's freaking out and I've got this clear voice. You're going to work with kids and you're going to help them connect to food. I didn't know how, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to do that. And so I went into surgery. It took us three days to bring the right surgeons in. took him three days. I was paralyzed the whole time and it was just pure terror, pure shock. And I woke up. So Sunday I broke my neck. I woke up on a Wednesday morning and I could move. I mean, I was, I was, I needed to be horizontal for two months. I had two years of rehab to walk again. It was brutal, but I could move. And it was, It was the clear voice. It wasn't like the clear voice was a flash. It was a just constantly beautiful, clear voice. And I was like, okay, I guess I'm going to go work on kids and food. And so my wife, Jen Lu, at the time, she and I started working on this idea of gardens in schools. I sort of look at a lot of ideas because there's a lot of mental space when you can't move your body. I'm not paralyzed at this point, but I can't move my body much because I've got to look after it while it's healing. So let me horizontal. I literally have to be horizontal 24 hours a day except for the restroom. I allow to get up to go to the restroom with, like, with a Halo on and. But. But horizontal, your mind is moving at 30, 000 miles an hour, and we designed what became these learning Gardens that are now all over the country and. the business model, you know, a tech guy. So I couldn't help but have a business model for this, even though it was a nonprofit. The business model was to turn the whole idea around, which the previous school gardens were on grade, you know, in the corner of the schoolyard, you know, some parents would come in and they would just kind of make a couple of little things and like little beds and it would look nice for a moment. But then it would eventually just turn into this disaster in the corner. The facilities guys didn't want to deal with it, so they put a fence around it. Those fences cost 10 grand, so it wasn't like they weren't spending money. They just didn't want to deal with it. And then the principal would have to try and figure out how to look after it. It just became this complete problem for the principal and facilities. Teachers wouldn't use it because if you had to have a lock and key to get through the gate, and then the kids of course couldn't go in without a teacher. I decided let's try and turn it around. Let's put money into the, let's invest in the garden. Let's put, you know, $30,000 to $50,000 into it. Build something beautiful, build it out of playground equipment material that is food safe, that's ADA accessible, that is raised up. Go to biggreen.org, get a feel for the beauty of the products that we created. and by the time COVID hit, we'd actually installed 650 beautiful 2,000 square foot outdoor classroom shade structures and everything. And it was really amazing and I'm so proud of the team and the group that I work with. We moved mountains to make that possible. When COVID hit, we were not allowed to work in schools, so we changed our model to, we call it the Big Green DAO, which is a collective of nonprofits that vote on which other nonprofits should receive funding and including receive some equipment. So the equipment that we created is beautiful and very useful. All right, which nonprofit out there in Atlanta or Detroit or Baltimore or these sort of, they tell me these challenged neighborhoods, which ones do we want to learn about and possibly provide them some funding, some equipment and some teachings? and now we've grown that up to 150 nonprofits and we bring them together once a year in Denver and they spend two to three days together and they teach each other things that they know. So it's like a learning together process because some nonprofits are really good at fundraising, some nonprofits are really good at working with school districts, some nonprofits know how to grow in this geography or that geography. and some nonprofits know politics really well and how do you get politicians to engage in what you're doing? So these beautiful learnings that we're now able to bring together rather than us tell nonprofits what to do, we actually are asking them to tell us and we participate as a nonprofit and it's one of my most joyful few days in the year is to go sit with this mostly BIPOC community because our communities we serve are BIPOC mostly. And it's absolutely wonderful. It's just big green has become a joy. We really celebrate raising funds for these absolutely superstar nonprofits, but they're small. They're young. They're not necessarily young, but they are small. They want to be small. They want to serve their community. and it's worked out so well and I'm so proud of that time and continues to unfold like this year. I wonder what this will be like. It's more of that kind of feeling.

And I'm sure you've seen the impact in the schools because it seems like tragedy has kind of given birth to lots of good things in your life. It gave 9/11, gave birth to the kitchen and your own accident and brush with paralysis for the rest of your life made you inspired to give back. do something for kids. And now, with COVID you basically have a new model for empowering other nonprofits. So it's a gift that keeps on giving. I hope you don't have to have any more traumas to have another vision of what you want to do.

I just learned in other ways. Exactly. My joke about my accident, my neck break was, if not for the physical trauma, I highly recommend the psychological awakening.

Exactly right. No, I get you on that one. I've had my own journeys with sickness and make you kind of look at things differently. What I want to hear about more is what happened to the kids. You go to these schools, you take places where kids are struggling, where they don't have access to good food, where they're not connected to nature, and you create an environment for them to immerse themselves in, to learn about food, to grow food, to eat the food, to cook the food, what are the impacts you're seeing in these kids in their life, their academic performance, their mood, ADD, the whole spectrum of things you might expect when you use food as a tool?

I really believe growing food changes lives. It is such a beautiful, I believe it didn't change lives for kids, also for adults, but when we work with our children, we work, I mean, we're working now probably over a million kids a day, and it's truly, when I say we work, we work through our non-profits we are at scale. And when I get the opportunity to go and be with kids in the gardens, which I love, I'm still shocked. We go install a garden and I'll, the kids will come out. We were very thoughtful about it, what we grow in the garden. We don't grow things kids don't want to eat, but we love carrots, we love cherry tomatoes, we love strawberries. we love cilantro and we'll do, we'll do, we'll actually like make, there's a, we'll design it. This is a garden that makes pizza.

Like it's got a pizza garden. I like that. That's gonna win some friends with little kids for sure.

That's right. Well, this is a garden that makes salsa and it's got cilantro and onions and things like that. So the kids can relate to it because they don't know what food is. They just know the package version. food. And so I'll literally show kids a tomato and they will ask me, what is that? And it is just so sad that we have our whole next generation. This is not their fault. I mean, they're kids that they have no connection, not even food literacy. And I love when they, especially with the cherry tomato, when they kind of It gets, it becomes a game, they kind of dare each other to try it because they've never had one, never had one. I mean, it's, but it's a wonderful little game and then eventually someone tries it and they're like, oh my god, that's great. And then one after the other, they're all diving into their, to have a cherry tomato. And, and so we get such joy out of it. One of the things that I think that, that is so powerful about growing food with kids is this concept of nutrition security.

Talk about that.

What is that? It's like you could just, you're seven years old, you're gonna go grow food whenever, because you're only seven. But these kids live in hunger. They live in really difficult times. They live in poor neighborhoods. And when you have a different relationship to food that you know that you can grow it, it just changes the psychological fear of starvation. or hunger. And that is really powerful. So you get it, you get, you improves your nutrition security. It also improves your mental health. These kids come out into the classroom and it's outdoors and they're in nature. That is one of the greatest gifts of growing food is, and I'll say that about cooking as well. The growing food, cooking, it's meditative. It is a beautiful way to spend some time. what our kids will do in recess, you can go kick a ball around or you can go climb the playground. But if you want to read a book, you go to the garden. It also offers this calming environment. And then one of the other things that I believe is a sign of the times is it also opens your eyes to the weather volatility created by climate change. And years ago, you grow food, you you pretty much know how the weather is. And nowadays, it's sad, but it's a powerful lesson how sudden, strange weather will destroy what you've been growing. And that becomes a lesson that we treat it in a positive, like, what did we learn here? What did we learn about how climate has affected the garden? What is more resilient? What is less resilient? And how can we change and, and you're working with kids who are seven to ten years old, but they, they get it.

They get it.

So it's, it's a growing food changes their lives, and it helps us create a generation of kids as they get older that do understand more about climate change and how it's affecting their, their lives. And I really, really feel it. I feel how much growing food changes lives.

It's so true. And it's, you know, one of the things that people don't realize is that cooking and growing food are human activities that have been going on for probably hundreds of thousands of years.

Yeah, exactly.

They're kind of essential to what makes us human. I mean, Michael Pollan talks about this.

In his book Cooked.

He says, when we learn to cook is when we became truly human.

And.

The act of actually having your fingers in the dirt of doing something real, that's why I really love cooking because so much of my life is digital computers, writing and all this stuff and actually getting in the kitchen and having, like, last night we made this delicious chicken. I had to work, you know, pasta raised chicken, and I kind of pounded it down and put a little egg and flour on it and put in a pan with some olive oil. Delicious. And we roasted some shiitake mushrooms and amazing brussels sprouts and little peas. It was very simple dinner. And, and it just, you know, I, I'm busy working all day, and I get in the kitchen, it's just feel like you're doing something authentically human. And I love that experience.

When I come home from work, my kids hold me accountable. So since they were born and now my oldest are 21, my youngest is 11, so it's been a while. I have cooked for them and I've made them sit down for dinner and we do our little gratitudes and in the morning I'll cook breakfast and and as they've gotten older, they went through a little bit of a rebellious phase where they were like, oh, not for me. But it was a very short phase. And then, and then I was like, okay, but I'm still gonna do it to the other kids. You, you just, you're just not gonna sit with us. And I'm not here to be, I'm not gonna guilt trip you, but it's pretty nice. And now when I'm with our kids, they're like, we're definitely sitting down for dinner. Where's dad? he has to be here on my own now. Now I'm the one that has to get. We all cook now. It's not just me, but we celebrate that moment which can be five minutes long where we just take a moment to eat our food and connect as a family. And we do it around 6:00 p.m. and I might go back to work or the kids might go do their homework. But sometimes, we have something to talk about and we will talk for an hour, hour and a half and sometimes we will have something funny to share and it's and we'll laugh for an hour and we'll be together in that time that is so special that you just don't get if you don't create the container. So you just the container is let's cook a little food and let's sit together and we take a moment of gratitude and That container sets us off sometimes in the most beautiful directions and it's without obligation, but it's just a gift that I've given myself. And, I really believe food is a gift and it's a gift we give ourselves three times a day. Let's make it a good one.

Yeah, but what you're saying is so important. You're talking about it from a personal perspective of being connected with your family and the meaning it has for you in your life and the way it brings you together. sharing time and stories and laughter. But, there's so much science about the family dinner. And, families who eat together, and not even cook together, they should eat together, they cook together be more, have lower rates of obesity, eating disorders, ADHD, have better academic performance, less suicide. It's quite amazing to see the data from as a doctor, to see the scientific data around the power of family dinners and of staying connected.

I love that you, you know, I mean, I, I have it anecdotally for me. I love that it shows up in the data. That makes total sense to me. Our kids, just like all kids, go through tough times. And when we sit down and we eat together, sometimes those tough times are talked about. But actually, what I think is really beautiful about it is it's an anchor for them that they may have to deal with their own tough times without us because it's something to do with their, they want to share with their, with with their parents, with their siblings, but it's an anchor. They know that that's going to happen. It truly, I believe, truly at their base nervous system makes our kids happier kids. And it makes me and my wife happier. We, it's actually, you can even call it selfish, like I want it.

Yeah, exactly. I think what's so important about your cookbook the kitchen, which everybody should get a copy of. And it's, it's, it's subtitle is cooking for your community or could be cooking for your family is that it invites us into the kitchen. It breaks down cooking to a simple steps to make delicious meals so you don't have to be intimidated. And my mother always said to me, if you can read, you can cook. And so, yeah, if you can read a, if you can read a recipe and follow the directions, it's gonna come out, right? It's gonna come out. Don't skip steps. I mean, and it, and it actually teaches you how to cook. And so the recipes are in sense an instruction manual for how to cook. and then you begin to improvise and have fun on your own. But I would say everybody should get this cookbook, invite some friends over, get your family together, get the food, make it together and try it. It's surprisingly easy to do this. And yet we have this mental barrier of how, oh, I don't know how to cook.

I can't do this.

It's too difficult. And there's a story I wanted to share for a minute about a family. visited in South Carolina in one of the worst food deserts in America. And it was part of the movie Fed Up that I did about 10 years ago with Katie Couric and Laurie David. And this family was incredibly sick. The father was 42 on dialysis from having diabetes and kidney failure at 42. The mother was a probably 100 plus pounds of her weight. The son was a, you know, huge 16 years old, almost diabetic, about 50 body fat. A kid should be 10 to 20. And they never cooked a meal. Everything was a package box of can. And we just cooked one simple meal together. I taught them how to chili from scratch, how to make salad from scratch, how to make salad dressing from scratch, how to roast a potato, how to stir fry and a spearings, just simple things. I said, listen, I don't think it's gonna work, but here's a guide on how to eat well for less. Here's a cookbook that I wrote. Just go ahead and try this. And I didn't know what was gonna happen. They didn't have cutting boards. They didn't have knives. I sent them knives. I sent them cutting boards. And within the first week, the mother texted me back. We lost 18 pounds as a family. In a year, they lost 200 pounds. And they did it by just cooking simple real food together. for a family of five. They lived on food stamps and disability, had a thousand bucks a month for food for a family of five. And they were able to do this. And so this was an, sort of an example to me of how we're really only one meal away from solving some of, so much of what's wrong with America.

You're totally right. I love that phrase, one meal away. The, the idea that, that eating, cooking at home is more expensive, it's just not true. If you go to McDonald's and eat for a family of four, you're gonna pay 30 to $35. You go to a grocery store, a normal grocery store, and you buy a chicken and some vegetables for the side or some potatoes. You're probably not gonna spend more than $10.

And you go to big box stores like Costco, the easiest deal you could.

Possibly cook, and you'll get to cook with your family in food that's very accessible, very delicious. Now, you can spend more money if you want, but actually we have the ability to eat affordably, but your phrase of we're one meal away is exactly right. It's beautiful. Just give it a try. Just go and say to your family, I'm going to go cook. And I think what's also a great lesson that I've learned is don't say you're going to cook once. Say that you're going to cook four or five times because you're going to get a little confidence. You know, I got lucky on my first one. When I cooked that chicken and it came out perfectly, don't put that much pressure on yourself. Like, tell your family and friends, I'm going to cook four or five times and by that fourth or fifth time, you will have hit it and you will hit home. Especially when you use good recipes, please try some from the book, but there are many great recipes out there for the food you love. But yeah, just dedicate a few hours of practice, meaning the first four are a practice and the fifth one is real. But frankly, you're going to hit it right probably within that first two or three. So I really think you're one meal away from changing your life in a beautiful, beautiful way.

Yeah, it's true, Kimball. Thanks for your work. Thanks for the cookbook. It's a great gift to us. It's just beautiful cookbook. It's great to look at. The recipes are delicious.

They're simple to follow. The food's amazing. Yeah, I really wanted the cookbook to feel like you're in the restaurant. It's got like energy in the photos, but it's got a photo of every.

Dish and it's really how I feel food should be. It's exciting. Yeah, it really is. And this is really a celebration in some ways of what you've built over the last 20 years at the restaurant, both or the kitchen and all the other restaurants you've done. big green and all the work you've done in trying to make the world a little bit better by improving our food and our awareness around food and kids education around food. It's, it's really a gift of work you've done. You could have done a million things, and it's, it's just a beautiful thing that you've created. So I want everybody to support it. Go get the kitchen cookbook, cooking for your community. It's out now. You can, if you're in Boulder, definitely check out the restaurant, the kitchen. You can check out big green. It's incredible non-profit that helps kids get empowered around food and gardening and really about education. So it's really a bigger thing than just having a little garden. It's a whole educational curriculum about nutrition. So thanks so much, Kimball, for your work in the world and making the world just a little bit better every day.

Thank you so much. I want to do a quick shout out to our local bookstores. Please, you can get it on Amazon. Search Kimball Musk cookbook. You'll find it. But also please go support your local bookstores and enjoy. Enjoy the book, have fun with it.

All right, thanks, Kimball.

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