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Kibbe on Liberty
Ep 343 | What Has Government Done to Our Food? | Guest: Andrew Gruel
00:38:55
Matt Kibbe sat down with Chef Andrew Gruel to talk about food freedom and making America healthy again.
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- [00:00]
Matt Kibbe
Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. I'm live at Freedom Fest, and I'm fanboying a little bit because I get to talk to chef Andrew Gruel about cooking and about how government screws up all the food we eat and how you take your food freedom back. Check it out. Welcome to Kibbe on Liberty. Chef. It's good to finally meet you.
- [00:54]
Andrew Gruel
Oh, it's great. Thank you so much. It's an honor.
- [00:56]
Matt Kibbe
I've been following your food porn for many years. You make me hungry at inappropriate times, and it's just a. It's a nightmare. But it's fascinating to me to meet a chef who's sort of willing to express opinions that may cause you some anxiety back in California. I don't know.
- [01:17]
Andrew Gruel
Oh, definitely anxiety. But you mentioned the food porn. Off the bat, I found out the hard way that people mute me at certain times of the day or various times of the year. So thanks for continuing to watch it.
- [01:29]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back because I'm thinking about your new book, and I haven't. I haven't even looked at it. I haven't cracked it, but the family cookbook. And I was thinking about how visceral making a meal for somebody is and how it's sort of an emotional commitment. It's a sign of respect, and it's something that definitely holds families together. How did you get into cooking?
- [01:56]
Andrew Gruel
Almost out of survival to some degree. And I'm sensationalizing that. I did not grow up in a family where we were cooking every day together. Two working parents. I was kind of a latchkey child. The food that we got was mostly. And I grew up in Jersey, right? So it was like pizza and fast food takeout. Christmas morning was, like, microwaved. Sara Lee. We ate out a lot. So I came to appreciate and understand the art of hospitality and dining out. But I just started learning on my own, right? I was sick one day from school. I was like 7 or 8 years old, and I started watching all those daytime cooking shows. Remember pbs, like Yonkon Cook, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, those old school dump and stir cooking shows. And I fell in love with it. I was like, this is awesome. And I started trying to do it in the kitchen. Cleaned up before my mom got home. Next day, I'm like, oh, I don't feel good. I'm sick. Did the whole thermometer next to the light bulb. Started watching more of the shows all day. Doing it in the kitchen, like, that was it. That was the spark, the catalyst that got me to fall in love with cooking. And then for years was trying to train myself. When I could finally work officially at the age of 15, first thing I did was went out and found a restaurant that would hire me. It was a catering company. Started working there, then a restaurant, then a hotel, then I go to college. I went to a small liberal arts college up in Maine, studying philosophy, social philosophy, politics and piano performance. Well, what did I end up doing? Spending 80 to 90 hours a week in a restaurant, working. So I dropped out of college and was like, okay, this is what I gotta do.
- [03:22]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. It's funny, this is probably a deep cut in before your time, but I used to watch the Galloping. Galloping Gourmet.
- [03:27]
Andrew Gruel
Galloping Gourmet, Yep. Yeah, tvc.
- [03:30]
Matt Kibbe
And I used to. I was. I was a weird kid because I would want to. After watching that, I'd want to go cook with my mom. And she taught me. And it was all that sort of classic American cooking that was. Had its German and Italian roots. And I know how to make all that stuff. So I've always enjoyed sort of. The funnest time I have is just hanging out in the kitchen. And it's not the quality of stuff that you do because you're actually a professional, but making a decent meal for my wife and I is just probably the funnest thing I can do.
- [04:04]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah. And no matter where you're at, your head, space, anything, you kind of fall into that. There's a muscle memory to it. Right. And it just. Other things fade away. That's why whenever there's a party or whenever there's a gathering, where does everybody end up? In the kitchen. Right. Like, what's the first place you walk into? You awkwardly walk into a party. You don't know everybody. Like, you end up in the kitchen somehow. There's something. It's the. It's the deep leather recliner in a psychologist's office. You know, beyond in life is the kitchen.
- [04:34]
Matt Kibbe
You spoke yesterday with Jennifer Tse about sort of the branding and the business of, in her case, athletics, in your case, cooking. How many restaurants do you cook, manage, own?
- [04:45]
Andrew Gruel
Well, now we just have one. We had 45 as of like four years ago, but we sold. We sold that company. So We've opened over 50 in our LA in the last 15 years.
- [04:56]
Matt Kibbe
What's left? Calico.
- [04:58]
Andrew Gruel
Calico Fish House. So after we sold that restaurant company, with all of our restaurants, we're like, we're not going to open another restaurant for at least five or 10 years. 48 hours later, we signed a Lease on a spot and created a new brand. Now we're registering that one to franchising. Grow that out.
- [05:12]
Matt Kibbe
Because of the food porn. I schlepped my wife a couple hours out of our way when we were in Southern California to go to Calico Fish House.
- [05:20]
Andrew Gruel
Oh, you did. Thank you.
- [05:21]
Matt Kibbe
And I have to say, like, it's a, it's a. I'm, you know, I'm a foodie, but I'm sort of tired of having tried all the super fancy stuff where the arrangement on the plate is more important than the food itself. I now just like really good food that's a little bit simpler in presentation, but also with like really nice glasses of wine, really carefully curated craft beer. And I couldn't speak more highly of the experience. Even though it was the cheeseburger with lobster on it, it was freaking amazing.
- [05:56]
Andrew Gruel
Thank you. And I agree with you 1000%. I think that we've over intellectualized food. So I want to bring it back to the basics, which is really the genesis of the this cookbook, which there's nothing like really far beyond what you've already seen. But our formula, both within the family cooking, because we're really an enterprise, the six of us is take classic, well known American dishes, comfort food, right. Like chicken tenders, burgers, lobster rolls, these things. And then just add a little bit of a unique spin, a twist. But stick to the fundamentals when it comes to flavor. Right. Always remember salty, sour, sweet, bitter, umami. Make sure we fulfill that flavor profile and then just make whatever we're making the best tasting, the most memorable. And that's it.
- [06:35]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, yeah. So tell me more about this cookbook. And is this your first book or do you have many cookbooks?
- [06:42]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, this is the first cook. I mean, yeah, actually, now that I think about it, this is the first cookbook that we've done. We did this in partnership with Brave books. I don't know if you're familiar with Brave books, the kids cookbook or the kids book series. Our kids have been reading that for years and it was almost a natural fit. And we wanted to do something that got the kids more in the kitchen. But the book itself, it's 40 or, sorry, 50. 50 recipes, easy to prepare, very approachable, no seed oils, kind of good, healthy fats. And I had all my kids make the recipes after I wrote them to make sure that they could be done and be done in a certain time frame. So versus and I worked for a cookbook company once and right. It's like a hundred test Cooks doing the recipes over and over and over again. I'm like, if my kids can do it, anybody can do it. So in so much as it's a family cookbook, like if you're a single guy, 18, 19 years old, just got to college, like, this is for you. If you're, you know, 55, 60 year old, living alone, like, or just, you know, on the road, like, this is for you.
- [07:42]
Matt Kibbe
So I want to go grumpy old man on you because one of the, for me part of cooking is actually going to the grocery store and picking out the vegetables that I'm going to cook with. And that experience of sort of gathering the ingredients that I'm going to take home and feed my wife. And I get really annoyed at all the Amazon shoppers and the people that are sort of outsourcing one of the first responsibilities you have, which is to make a decent meal for your family. Does that make me sort of kooky and retro?
- [08:15]
Andrew Gruel
No, not at all. Actually going shopping is an event for our family. We make that like a thing. So it's like the kids actually love going to the grocery store. I've taught them early on about the function and the business of how a grocery store works. So it's kind of like they have a little knowledge. They like picking the fruit, they like finding what's right. Plus they also like getting goodies. Right. Like that's part of it. But we've made it an experience. I did grow up with that. Like every Friday my mom would go to the grocery store to get groceries for the week. It was a Friday thing for some reason. That was actually time we got to spend together.
- [08:47]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [08:47]
Andrew Gruel
And it was the thing. So we've done that. So I totally agree with you. It is horrible. And first, and they, they pick the worst produce. If you ever do use the Amazon, of course. Yeah. Or the door dashes. Instacarts of the world, they pick the worst stuff. Who knows what they're doing with it? And yeah, it does, it does ruin it. So I agree.
- [09:05]
Matt Kibbe
And it's. I feel like there's a counter revolution because on one hand you could say that you look at all these pre prepared foods and you know, everything's frozen or pre diced or they've taken all of the work out of eating. But I feel like there's a counter revolution where people actually want to do something with their hands. You know, they're probably sitting at a keyboard all day and they want to do something real. Do you think that's happening?
- [09:30]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, a Lot of people have been writing to me and I use like my X and my social media as kind of a barometer for. For that. Right. Like, what are the trends? What are people looking for? And in the past six months, it's been what knife should I use? How should I improve my knife skills, cooking skills? Before, it used to be like, what's the best, you know, meal order to use? Or what's. I've noticed a lot more of it is like, can you do more videos on how to cut an onion, how to dice a pepper? So by way of that, like anecdotal evidence? Yeah, probably.
- [10:02]
Matt Kibbe
Thank you for joining me today on.
- [10:03]
Unknown Host
Kibbe on Liberty and for being part of our fiercely independent audience. Every week, my organization, Free the People, partners with BlazeTV to bring you this show. My guests bring smart perspectives on everything from current events to timeless philosophical debates. If you like what you hear, go to freethepeople.org kol and support Kibbe on Liberty so we can continue to produce these honest conversations with interesting people. Now, let's get back to it.
- [10:32]
Matt Kibbe
So right after you spoke, I wanted to ask you, I assume you know who he is, but Joel Salatin was speaking and I know you talk about this, about the difference between real food and processed food and even how the government and the food industrial complex has corrupted our food systems.
- [10:53]
Andrew Gruel
The government has ruined our food altogether. You know, originally it could have been seen as an unintended consequence, and now I feel it's intentional. But it's not just the food, right? Like, food is the environment. I know that it's kind of seems like an oxymoron, but I'm an environmentalist, like a libertarian environmentalist. And everybody thinks that the left is the environmentalist. That's not the case at all. It's all about who should be controlling the environment. Do you believe in private property or do you believe that the. In the tragedy of the commons? Right. I think that what we've seen with our food system as the government has merged with a few food companies, we see it in meat, but like just generally speaking, the Stockyard act of 1914, the idea was to actually break down the consolidation of the three or four biggest meat packers. At the time, they owned 74% of the industry. And that idea was we're going to use the government to deconsolidate. Right. Decentralize. Now, fast forward to today. It's 84%. And under the Stockyard act, now there's a bible of regulation. So the government should not be involved in food at all as they've gotten bigger, we've gotten sicker, the environment's gotten worse and our food system has gotten worse. Not just in terms of health and science. Don't fashion myself being a nutritionist or a scientist. Flavor, like just the flavor. If you talk to anybody on the street and just say, hey, what do you think about food from the 70s or the 80s or what do you remember tasting even in snack foods when you grew up? And they're like, oh, it was so much better. How about now? It's plastic, it's artificial, it leaves a bitter taste, it's synthetic.
- [12:26]
Matt Kibbe
So during, during lockdowns I was red pilled on almost everything. But as an economist, I was thinking about this in March of 2020 when they were saying that we're going to shut everyone down and everyone has to stay home. I took them literally. And I started thinking about how quickly the distribution and production of food would collapse. And I was telling this story to Joel Salatin, who I met through Thomas Massie, and I was saying the food distribution system and the production system is incredibly diverse. And to think that you could centrally plan that would be crazy. And he's like, hold on a minute. The food production system is quite fragile and brittle because it has been really centralized. And he talked about meat processing as an example of that. I think there's just four companies now.
- [13:19]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, it's four major companies, but it's not even the companies, it's the usda. We can talk about that separately, but carry on.
- [13:26]
Matt Kibbe
But I realized that as an economist, I would think, well, there's economies of scale, so it's good that we can produce food at scale and keep people fed. And I should have known better because the regulatory capture of what I would call the food industrial complex has made our system quite dangerous. And not just because of the way they've subverted the food pyramid, but the process itself capturing of regulation.
- [13:59]
Andrew Gruel
Well, it's also national security. So let's. Knowing you're an economist, which I knew but should have leaned on that, let's look at this through an economic lens. The argument about food is we need to centralize here for domestic production, but we also need to increase our global supply of food through imports. Right? So the majority of our food is imported. And many will say utilize the idea of comparative advantage, right? So take a tomato. I can grow a tomato in California, it's going to cost $3. Or I can import a tomato from Mexico or Honduras or wherever for a dollar. The difference is I get now with the import I have a tomato comparative advantage and I have $2 extra to spend locally in my pocket. So I get the tomato. Plus priming the local economy. That idea, which has really been captured by the government, that's their argument for, for importing so much and ignoring our domestic supply of food, doesn't take any externalities into consideration. So that tomato also supports so much beyond the tomato itself. It's also a lower quality tomato altogether. The infrastructure to be able to build and have your own kind of agrarian community by growing that tomato here has benefits that go far beyond the, the, the monetary value. And in the absence, most importantly, in the absence of our own ability to grow food. And then ultimately we can transfer this over to pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, what have you. We are now at the control of all of these other countries, primarily China, when we look at the national security issue and they own us and they can flip us, flip us upside down, you know, in a split second. And then the response to that is, well, let's put all the money in the military, which we, you and I probably don't agree with, if you're a libertarian. You see, so we can actually invest in food, we can invest in local food, meat, vegetable, produce production here. And in a way that actually makes us a stronger country. From a national security perspective, of course.
- [15:59]
Matt Kibbe
The cost of a $3 California tomato is surely driven in large part by regulations and taxes and unions.
- [16:07]
Andrew Gruel
It's actually the unions.
- [16:08]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. The cost of production.
- [16:10]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah.
- [16:11]
Matt Kibbe
So if we cared about local food, we would take a very libertarian approach and strip away all of those top down regulations and mandates and allow neighbors and communities to produce for themselves.
- [16:24]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, yeah. Get rid of the regulations. In addition, get rid of the union control, which is really mafia control. It's organized, it's mafia democracy. And then, because what the unit unions do is that they're artificially increasing the cost of labor through their relationships with the government, which is screwing everybody in the economy and they're taking all of that money. Right. So it's not helping the worker. The unions was once again unintended consequence. Maybe it was something good in the 50s or the 60s, but it's actually become a proxy government. The union is the black market behind the government, especially in California. So if you got rid of that, all you would lose. Like people say, oh, well, then suddenly the cost and everything goes down and then there's less money in that local economy. No, not when, when, when 100 union leaders are taking this money and then giving it to politicians, which is legal in California, then you're really only enriching a handful of people, which ironically is what they say they don't want, but it's what they, how they act and what they perpetuate.
- [17:23]
Matt Kibbe
So we did this documentary about Thomas Massie, and it's about five or six years ago now called off the Grid with Thomas Massie. And he's a student of Joel Salatin. So he is living off the grid for libertarian reasons. Like he's like, I don't want the government to control my source of power. And he's living a radically green lifestyle. He's a radical environmentalist. I know because he's a steward of the land and he respects scarce resources and he recycles everything in his property, produces his own water. And when we did that, we didn't emphasize that he was this liberty Republican and we didn't use any of those words. And by the time people watching the film realized who he was, they were confused because I thought I was supposed to hate that guy. But he's teaching me everything that I want to know about an independent lifestyle. If we kind of lead with food independence, I feel like maybe even more people on the left than the right would be attracted to that independence.
- [18:31]
Andrew Gruel
They would. So I started talking about. I've been political my whole life, as I mentioned, been very involved, growing up youth in government, model UN, volunteering for state senators. My parents were peripherally involved in politics. So I understand that my libertarian principles have really been pathological in me for years. And when I got involved in food and I started studying the food system, I recognized how upside down it was. But I'm also an environmentalist. We opened the first, we were the first certified green restaurant in the state of California. We were. My whole entire focus of my concept was sustainable seafood. Because in 2009 I started a non profit with the Aquarium of the Pacific in California to focus on promoting more local seafood, looking into aquaculture, understanding the seafood supply chain, and ultimately with the goal of increasing awareness for marine conservation and stewardship. Right, very left wing. All my supporters were on the left. Everybody that was helping and funding a lot of this education was on the left. Those same people hate me now, even though I'm saying the same thing about the food system I did 15 years ago. Because now it's becoming more moderate and right wing, interestingly with the Thomas Massey's of the world. And I think that food is the primary vehicle through which we can actually bring people together. Because everyone understands food. We talk about political theory, political philosophy, bills, statutes, any of that stuff, they utilize obfuscation. They want to confuse the general public so that you believe the propaganda and the headline. We all know food. So if we use food as the model through which we educate people truly about politics and how things work, they'll get it right. Suddenly it will make sense because you can use food now. That's food supply chain, that's food distribution, agriculture, growing, marketing every element of our economy through food. The government will hate that. And I think that's why I get targeted, because they don't want people to understand the way this works.
- [20:25]
Unknown Host
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- [21:02]
Matt Kibbe
So you're so outspoken and you're now fairly regular on Gutfeld. How does that affect your customer base at the fish house?
- [21:12]
Andrew Gruel
They love it. Our sales have gone up ever since people started boycotting me. The sales go up because we've become a haven for, for like pragmatic thinkers. I mean, I'm not overtly partisan. Some of the things I say may fall into a certain dogma or a lane, but like I'm not bombastic about trying to offend anybody on the spectrum of politics. I think it's just let's take common sense and let's put it into some pills that people can understand. So we actually have a pretty diverse audience. However, we do have people, by virtue of me being outspoken that drive miles and have made us like more of a, I hate to use this cliche, but like a public square where they know they can eat with and talk to other like minded people. And that's been nice, especially within the restaurant world because the restaurant world to some degree has been hijacked by a lot of the crazy culture wars of the left as seen through like Food Network and some of the big celebrity chefs and those who actually do believe in what we're kind of expressing. They're so scared to speak out because they don't want to lose that TV money. And I'll be the face of it. I'll be the scapegoat. That's fine.
- [22:23]
Matt Kibbe
It's funny. So I live in D.C. and more and more when I go to a restaurant, there's always some sort of 20% social justice surcharge. And you get this whole dissertation about how our workers need to earn a living wage as if it's not the employers and the employees job to figure out what a reasonable wage is. And we just, I guess we're rolling back some massive mandated increase in the minimum wage because the workers working at restaurants are getting screwed. Because when you get those surcharges you're like, well I'm not going to tip. On top of that, you just get annoyed about it.
- [23:00]
Andrew Gruel
Well, it's funny, the devout communists, they come after me as being anti worker. I'm the most pro worker person in the world. I opened my own restaurant to treat workers better because I saw how restaurateurs and chefs were treating workers. I've always paid well above whatever the minimum wage is. My dishwashers right now are making six figures. I've actually figured out a business model that really relies on free market principles where we can pay our workers more. They can have equipment equity without having literal equity in the business. And I have virtually zero turnover. I also speak out aggressively about government involvement in wage and workforce stuff because I think that they ultimately all of those regulations hurt the worker. And I, and I talk about that and every single thing I say becomes truth. I'm not saying that I'm, that I'm a mind reader. It's just anytime the government gets overly involved in private, especially small to medium sized businesses, not large business because ultimately large business is driving a lot of this regulation because the regulation hurts the small guys and that's what they want. They want to consolidate. So the worker wage stuff is so funny that it's not funny actually. But every single time you mandate these unreasonable uneconomic increases in minimum wage, workers get fired.
- [24:15]
Matt Kibbe
So you, you were pretty outspoken in California during lockdowns, supporting the workers who were deemed non essential and just put out of business. I would assume that California was even worse than D.C. which was pretty awful in terms of destroying the small restaurants, the small businesses, consolidating it. Like if you're a massive corporation you can afford to just sort of ride it out. But everybody else went out of business.
- [24:46]
Andrew Gruel
If you had cash on the balance sheet, you were all good. Obviously PPP funding favored a lot of those bigger corporations. And employee retention credits. There were two programs. The retention credit program, frankly I actually thought was better. I thought that was a good program. All the retention credit program did was give you rebates on payroll taxes. I thought that that underscored how crazy payroll taxes are. Because if you look at the fact that the employee retention credit was producing more money than direct loans, it's like, wait a minute, we pay that much in taxes? That was kind of the interesting element of that. But in California, it wasn't just the way in which workers were getting hit, but it was the disregard, the indifference towards the workers. In December of 2020, when they shut down outdoor dining going into the holidays, they had already exposed the fact that their unemployment insurance had gone bankrupt because of the fraud. That $50 billion was lost, which was federal dollars that came into California. They misappropriated all that money. I think it was. I think people should go to jail. I don't think it was all fraud. I think there was an internal scam. I don't have the time to investigate that. So they had no money in unemployment insurance. They were waiting for Biden to come in and basically refresh the coffers after January 6. But they said to all the workers, sorry, you'll get the unemployment. You'll be approved. Because when they shut down outdoor dining, everybody lost their job. But the money's not gonna be available to you until February or March. This is going into the holidays. These people have no money and nobody was out there to help them. No grants, no opportunities. Get Newsom's. Newsom's response was, you'll figure it out. So that's when we started a fund. We raised over $650,000 originally to only fund those workers in California. We ended up doing it was 13% went to D.C. maryland, Virginia, 20% went to New York, New Jersey. The rest was spread through the middle of the country. And then the lion's share was California because it wasn't just in California, but through that stage of us being the only people. I was driving around on Christmas Eve with my three kids, we just had a fourth. Paying people's rent checks, paying people's utility bills, giving them a thousand dollars to be able to buy their kids Christmas gifts. And I was getting a attacked at the time for being a grandma killer, for being a hardcore right wing conspiracy theorist.
- [27:02]
Matt Kibbe
The insensitivity to that from lockdowners, and Jay Bhattacharya calls them the laptop class, which I think is a great explanation. And surely the governor of California can't imagine what it would be like living paycheck to paycheck, but they didn't even consider it. And it was a classic case of haves and have nots. But, but reversed because it was, it was these authoritarians screwing the working class. Unbelievable.
- [27:30]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, they didn't. And I think that that proves it. But what really disappoints me is five years later, four years later, that they've almost gotten a pass. And that, you know, people say to me, like, oh, it's been four years, Shut up about it. But no, I'm not going to, because, you know, this is. We know who these people really are. You can't forget about that. You know, I'm not gonna forgive a rapist. You know, I'm not going to. I'm not going to let these people continue to run our lives. I'm going to continue complaining about it, but not just complaining, also offering solutions. That was the difference, right? Like, I wasn't sitting there saying, oh, screw you, we need our government money. I'm like, I'm going to figure out a way to resolve this on our own. Let the private market do it. Let the community do it. And the community came together. I, I didn't put 600. I didn't have $650,000. That was people from all over the country donating in $20 increments to our cause to help the community. And it's like, we don't even need the government if 10 other people did that. Take the $50 billion and give it back to the taxpayers because we'll do it on our own.
- [28:33]
Matt Kibbe
Imagine free people coming together and cooperating and solving problems. Like, who knew that could happen?
- [28:39]
Andrew Gruel
And it's bipartisan, you know. When the fires hit in Los Angeles, we did the same thing. We started a big fire relief fund. We started collecting goods, driving it into the fires, working with various organizations around the fires. We were direct on the lines with the firemen. We were helping with the schools. We ended up raising $400,000 in goods and money. And for a month, me and my family that took the kids out of school, we were driving up until two o' clock in the morning to the Dream center, to the fire line, to taking care of everybody. And it was in my parking lot, which you've been to the restaurant. A lot of parking spaces. We had two. At one point, we had 200 volunteers helping load trucks to bring up to the fire lines and to the relief centers. And I remember one day, it was like this group of people, they pull up in a Prius. It was like, I'm with her stickers, like full on, like pro Kamala gear. And then this other guy in a big truck with a huge trunk trump Flag like the cliched Trump supporter in Huntington Beach. And then we. A public works truck pulls in because Huntington Beach City council actually pulled public works trucks off the production line to help us. So the two people come out. It was actually eight people that come out of the car, and they start loading up from an Amazon box truck onto the public works truck. And they're high fiving. Yeah, right. Like they're the bestest friends in the world because they're all helping a singular cause that's seemingly nonpartisan. It was the coolest thing in the world. You see, when. When you let the community have the agency to fix a problem, they're gonna be best friends. When you argue about who the government should give money to, like who daddy should be doling out money to, you're gonna hate each other. Just like brothers and sisters that hate each other after the will gets, you know, carved up the wrong way.
- [30:15]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah.
- [30:15]
Andrew Gruel
But together they were the bestest friends in the world.
- [30:18]
Matt Kibbe
That's a great metaphor for the solution because you watch the politics increasingly become a game of Thrones where if we lose this election, that king is going to destroy us. And it just seems to keep spiraling out of control and no better. But if you can get it out of politics, you realize that you can actually learn to love your neighbors because they'll help you solve the problems that you all agree need to be solved.
- [30:46]
Andrew Gruel
And that you were under the false impression could only be solved by this a priori, this shadow government at the top, who we think is so smart. And that's where I go back to the obfuscation. But really, they're not. Some are. Don't get me wrong. They're brilliant minds in Congress and across government, but there's also brilliant minds in our own communities.
- [31:10]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah. At Kibbe on Liberty, Freedom is a.
- [31:14]
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- [31:37]
Matt Kibbe
I want to tell a quick story about a project we're working on, because I want to get back to food as sort of a gateway drug.
- [31:44]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, I love that.
- [31:45]
Matt Kibbe
Understanding how liberty.
- [31:47]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah.
- [31:47]
Matt Kibbe
How liberty actually functions in practice. We just released a new documentary about a winemaker in the country of Georgia. And my wife and I have traveled to Georgia a number of times. There's a very vibrant libertarian movement there because they know what big government's all about. Their parents lived through it, and they know what that threat is. Well, Georgia has this incredible food and wine culture. Culture. And a friend of mine who's a libertarian there brought me a bottle of Georgian wine because he knows I'm a wine geek. And I was like, oh, great, Georgian wine. I'm sure that's going to be awesome. And it was. It was freaking awesome. If my eyes were closed, I would have thought it was $200 of French Bordeaux. And then I met the winemaker who casually said to me, yeah, after the fall of the Soviet Union Union, I cobbled together the money to repurchase the vineyards that Stalin sold from my grandparents. I'm like, that's a story. So we've made a movie about. I call it a wine porn movie because it's really about wine and wine culture and this 8,000 year tradition and these beautiful wines. And you desperately need a glass of wine when you're watching this film. But it's also a story about the callous failures of. Of central planning and how Stalin crushed this tradition and started producing really shitty, mass produced, high alcohol, sweet, garbage wine. So if you're into wine, you're just going to watch the film because you're into wine. And it's exotic. Like maybe you don't even know where Georgia is. But more importantly, you might get a sort of an economics lesson in a glass. Maybe.
- [33:26]
Andrew Gruel
I love that. I'm excited to see. See that? You just described the American food system. What did they do? They replaced artisanal foods and replaced it with highly sweet, high fructose corn syrup. Right. Junk food with soy corn and government subsidized byproducts. Central planning turned our artisanal good foods into junk.
- [33:48]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, there's a film in the making there. Although I think Joel and Thomas Massie have been preaching from this soapbox for quite some time. I hope we get somewhere.
- [34:01]
Andrew Gruel
They have. But I will say this. And this is where. And I'm not. Maybe I'm being selfish in making this statement. There's no chef voice. And the reason that's important is that in some parts of this conversation, we almost need to remove intellect and use our palates. Our palates are our brains. People understand, understand these conversations by way of quality food and flavor. It's really that simple, that visceral, that primal. So let's use the seed oils as an example. There's a big economic conversation behind the seed oils. How we got here. Industrial byproducts, subsidization all of this, right? But at the end of the day, seed oils are junk and they taste like junk. And the better alternative, the better option in red regards to strictly quality food and flavor is saturated fat. And there's scientific culinary reasons why. And I talk to people about that and explain them the Culinary 101 on it, and they're like, I totally agree with you. I don't care about the end chronic disease. I don't care about all this other stuff. But I agree with what you're saying about quality. I'm 100% anti seed oil. And I'm like, there you go, right? Like we just use the very most, the most basic principle to get people involved in that. And it's food and flavor.
- [35:13]
Matt Kibbe
I love that. I love that. So if someone's watching this and they're feeling guilty because they primarily consume fast food and they don't think about what they ate, they view it as a necessary evil. Just to make sure that you have calories. Don't know how to cook, how do you get started? How do you stop that cycle and say, okay, I'm gonna go to the grocery store and I'm gonna make something.
- [35:36]
Andrew Gruel
One meal at one meal a week. That's it. Just do one more meal in your kitchen. You can go to americangravy.com I do hundreds of cooking videos, five to ten minute cooking videos. Very simple, very approachable. I pepper in a lot of politics, but I keep it really basic where I'm teaching you the most simple things like vinaigrettes and dressings and mayonnaise and sandwiches and just real simple ways of cooking. I've taken years of culinary experience and tried to distill it into like a beginner's guide, but just that one meal, because it's muscle memory, right? It's like the 10,000 hour rule. You'll become an expert after doing something over and over and over again. Some of the areas in which most of the, you know, the highly processed ingredients and the things that are making us sick live are things like mayonnaise and dressings and vinaigrettes, things that sit in your fridge and use on everything. So if you learn how to make a vinaigrette, which you can do with just in a jar and shake it up and make it and stop buying vinaigrettes, like that's 30% of your diet. Weekly mayonnaise, the same thing. Making your own chicken. Instead of buying junk deli meat, like literally, just take chicken breast, toss it in, extra virgin olive oil, some seasoning, Whatever you want to make, throw it in an oven 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Big batch of it, stick it in your refrigerator and slice it when you want to eat it. That's huge. Like that one act that takes 15 minutes. And now having your own fresh chicken for deli sandwiches in your refrigerator is massive. So it's these, like, baby steps. Little steps can go a long way in the kitchen.
- [37:01]
Matt Kibbe
What is your favorite recipe? Was it one that your kids made for you out of this book?
- [37:05]
Andrew Gruel
Out of this book. It's the Cheez its. Because that's. We all love Cheez Its. Right? Like, that's the ultimate snack food. And we make our own in this recipe with just a fresh aged cheddar, a little bit of flour, baking soda, butter. That's it. That's how simple they are. So I always have kids the make that one, and that's one we have on the counter at all times.
- [37:23]
Matt Kibbe
Nice. Well, we should work on using food as that gateway drug because I'd love to collaborate with you in some way because I'm obsessed with comedy and music and emotional storytelling. And we use alcohol as a gateway drug too, because there's always a stupid government story behind the regulation of whiskey or beer or wine. And it's, you know, people love beer, wine, and whiskey. And in the process, they're going to learn a little bit about markets and how free people can make something better.
- [37:54]
Andrew Gruel
Yep. Yeah, I love it. I love all the arts. As I mentioned, I was, I was a piano performance major, jazz, all that stuff. But I think comedy and cooking, we can maybe make something happen there.
- [38:04]
Matt Kibbe
All right, where do people get this book?
- [38:06]
Andrew Gruel
Www.andrewcookbook.com all right, cool.
- [38:09]
Matt Kibbe
Yeah, this was awesome. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time.
- [38:12]
Andrew Gruel
Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much.
- [38:13]
Matt Kibbe
Awesome.
- [38:14]
Andrew Gruel
Appreciate it.
- [38:16]
Unknown Host
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