Farm-to-Table-Feast: Nourishing Minds and Bodies

🌾🍴 Step right up, farmers and foodies alike! It’s lunchtime on Farm Talk, and let me tell you, today’s episode is a feast for the senses! Join Paul as he embarks on a culinary adventure like no other, delving into the world of wholesome, farm-fresh goodness with none other than the remarkable Hilary Boynton.

Picture this: nestled in the heart of Topanga Canyon lies the Manzanita School, where Hilary reigns supreme over a lunch program that’s anything but ordinary. Bid farewell to bland PBJ sandwiches and bland tater tots, because Hilary’s culinary creations are a symphony of flavor and tradition. Sourdough bread, lovingly fermented and baked on-site, awaits, accompanied by generous slathers of golden ghee, slow-roasted pork shoulder, and vibrant swiss chard.

But that’s just the beginning of Hilary’s epicurean odyssey. Drawing inspiration from ancient traditions and culinary wisdom from around the globe, she crafts meals that not only satisfy hunger but nourish body and soul. Every ingredient is handpicked from local farms, including the esteemed Organic Pastures, Kandarian Organic Farms, and the illustrious Apricot Lane Farms, ensuring that every bite is bursting with freshness and flavor.

But Hilary’s mission goes beyond just serving up sensational meals. With a passion for education as robust as her flavors, she offers immersive cooking classes that empower students to embrace the art of mindful eating and conscious cooking. Because as Hilary believes, when you know better, you do better.

So grab your forks and knives, folks, because today’s lunch is a celebration of community, sustainability, and the timeless joy of good food. Don’t miss out on this mouthwatering journey with Hilary Boynton on Farm Talk! 🌱🍽️

Catch Hilary’s contagious energy and enjoy the episode!

Related Links:
Learn more about School of Lunch https://www.schooloflunch.com/
Purchase Hilary’s book http://www.healyourgutcookbook.com/
Manzanita School in Topanga Canyon https://manzanitaschool.org/

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Farm Talk with Paul Ward podcast wherever you get your favorite podcasts and enjoy episodes on the go!

WARNING: miscarriage content

In this episode you’ll learn:
0:00 Thanks to Hilary Boynton and the Manzanita School for hosting Paul Ward. Thank you to our sponsors that make Farm Talk possible.
0:28 Where the Manzanita School is located
1:24 The founding of School of Lunch and the importance of nutrient density
6:29 The GAPS diet – the gut/brain connection
7:31 Hilary writes a cookbook with Mary Brackett – The Heal Your Gut Cookbook
8:54 Inspiration behind the traditional and seasonal recipes
10:05 Sourcing local ingredients
12:50 An average day feeding 175 students at the Manzanita School
16:14 Incorporating traditions from many cultures into the food served at the school
18:46 Children participate in creating and enjoying new foods
20:06 Incorporating parents into the curriculum
21:53 Hilary’s Training Academy to help people learn how to cook real food
22:35 Manzanita School students grow and eat their own food
24:00 Expanding the School of Lunch program to other schools
26:43 The paradox of being overfed and undernourished

Related Episodes:
Pathfinders: Cultivating Leaders through the Scouting Journey
Reel Guppy Adventures: Nurturing Nature, Inspiring Youth
Harvesting Futures in Agricultural Education

Contact Paul Ward:
805-479-5004
paul@homeandranchteam.com

Have ideas for future episodes? We’d love to answer your questions – leave a comment! For any home buying or home selling needs in the Ventura County area of California, please reach out to Paul@HomeAndRanchTeam.com or visit www.HomeAndRanchTeam.com

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A special THANK YOU to our sponsors! Farm Talk with Paul Ward would not be possible without the support of our sponsors, Opus Escrow. Supporting our sponsors ensures Farm Talk can provide listeners with the best possible episodes.

Paul Ward (00:05):

Hi, it’s Paul Ward here. Welcome to another edition of Farm Talk. I’m very excited. Today we are in Topanga Canyon, California at the Manzanita School, and our very special guest is the founder of the School of Lunch Program. Hillary Boynton, welcome to the show. Thank you.

Hilary Boynton (00:20):

Thanks for having me.

Paul Ward (00:21):

Absolutely. And of course, we want to thank our sponsors, Opus Escrow and the Money Store. So we’re in Topanga Canyon, which is right outside the San Fernando Valley, kind of wedged in between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, kind of in this little pocket of mountains.

Hilary Boynton (00:41):

Yeah, yeah. We’re right between Santa Monica and Malibu, tucked away in these canyons and mountains here. It’s quite beautiful. It really is this kind of magical little vortex of nature. So in the heart of Los Angeles, but Right. You know, you’re just surrounded by nature everywhere you look, so it’s a special, it’s amazing place to be in Los Angeles. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Ward (01:01):

And you wear many hats here. But I have to say, starting off they call you, “The Lunch Lady.” Is that correct?

Hilary Boynton (01:10):

I guess, you know, it was sort of like I stepped in, I never thought I would be come, “The Lunch Lady,” but here I am. Yes, serving up food to kids.

Paul Ward (01:18):

Yeah. Wonderful. And the School of Lunch program, you started this about six years, is it six years ago or so?

Hilary Boynton (01:25):

Well, School of lunch is our brand that we developed about two years ago, but we’ve been doing this school lunch program for, this is our sixth year. Yes. So we branded ourselves because we’re now not just in operations here at the Manzanita School, but we’re doing training academies as well as consulting with schools and businesses. Anybody really who wants to take things to the next level and raise the bar and feeding kids or their communities or just even themselves and their families. So, yeah.

Paul Ward (01:54):

So great. And so when I think of school lunch, I think of tater tots, cheese pizza, maybe a slice of pepperoni, if you’re lucky, an apple that gets thrown away, a carton of milk, maybe chocolate milk, mac and cheese. And that’s what I think of.

Hilary Boynton (02:14):

The standard. Yeah.

Paul Ward (02:14):

And that’s not what you’re doing here?

Hilary Boynton (02:16):

No, we’re so different. So very different really based on a health journey that I went on with my family. About, gosh, like 16 years ago, well started way back in high school. I was that kid that fell for fat free and went that way for about a decade and had stress fractures in my both femur bones and both tibia bones my senior year in high school. I was a soccer player and went on to play in college. No one talked to me about diet. No one was like, “Let’s look at what this girl’s eating and why does she have stress fractures in four of her major bones?’ And then but I just rested and kept going and then went on. It was really about after college, I got married, and at 25 and at 26, got pregnant and miscarried right away.

Hilary Boynton (03:05):

That was sort of a little bit of a wake-up call, but I was still sort of in that fat free zone, and not really thinking about how I was nourishing myself. I went on to have three years of infertility. And again, no one really talked to me about diet. So I was super sad. It was a very, very hard time in my life. And really wondering why was my body broken and why couldn’t I hold a baby? I went on to have four miscarriages over the next three years. ‘m sure a lot of people can relate. It’s very, very painful. Then I ended up doing fertility treatments and had triplets. So I was blessed with three babies, three years of in fertility, two boys and a girl.

Hilary Boynton (03:45):

I was like, this is great. All done. And then, I thought about having another baby and boom, got pregnant right away and boom, boom. Had one, a fourth child and then a fifth child. So all of a sudden I had five babies under four.

Paul Ward (03:56):

So had you changed your diet at all?

Hilary Boynton (03:58):

Still hadn’t changed my diet. But sort of woke up to like organic and was like, if it said organic, then I was like, okay, I can feed them this. Whether it was cereal or pirate booty or whatever, still processed, packaged foods, and just really kind of not aware. Then my fourth baby, he was really my impetus for change. He was covered head to toe in eczema. This is getting back to your question about the way we’re feeding them differently.

Hilary Boynton (04:23):

I’m scooting around you, but he was covered head to toe. I had to pin ’em to my body in the middle of the night for two hours. I was exhausted. I had these five little babies and, you know, tried everything and then ended up putting ’em on Zyrtec twice a day and steroid cream. I knew, in my heart that it was just a bandaid. If I didn’t put the steroid cream on, it would flare. I was sort of just at my wits end, and ironically had stepped into trying to change the school lunches. This is back in Massachusetts, because I had stumbled upon the work of Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver. I was like, God, like kids need to have better food. Right. This woman that was helping me had told me that her son had been healed of asthma with raw milk.

Hilary Boynton (05:03):

I was just like, what is raw milk? I had never heard of it. I had been drinking skim milk my whole life. So I was like, whatever, I will try anything. I was so desperate. So I put him on raw milk and cod liver oil, and he was completely healed.

Paul Ward (05:16):

Wow!

Hilary Boynton (05:16):

In like a matter of a couple months. It was just eye-opening, like, wow! Real food just healed my child. When every doctor said, “He’ll probably have asthma, allergies, eczema, they just kind of go hand in hand. Maybe he’ll outgrow it, maybe not. We don’t know.” So I just dove in and learned a lot about the ancestral wisdom and traditional methods of cooking. I stumbled upon that. Well, this woman had told me about the Western Price Foundation, which people can look that up.

Hilary Boynton (05:42):

But it’s really based on this dentist’s excursion across the globe to non-industrialized pockets of people living and thriving free of disease. He studied their diets. They had focused on nutrient density, of course, local, seasonal, but those fat-soluble vitamins, that are gonna build the brain and build these beautiful broad bone structure with, you know, they’re all perfectly straight teeth and no cavities and whatnot. So, I was just like, okay, this nutrient dense thing, this going back to the old ways is the way to go. That’s when our health journey went on and on. Then I had a daughter with epilepsy. I had several kids with speech delays, one with a head tick. Then we decided to dive into the GAPS diet, which we can go into later.

Paul Ward (06:28):

What is that?

Hilary Boynton (06:29):

So the GAPS diet is the Gut and Psychology Syndrome, so the gut brain connection. There’s a lot of people that don’t realize that your health really begins in your gut. So, your gut health is tied to your brain health.

Paul Ward (06:42):

Really?

Hilary Boynton (06:42):

The way we nourish ourselves is so, so important. So, we ventured into this special diet for two years. At this point I was teaching cooking classes out of my home, and wanted to just shout from the rooftops that food is medicine, and that you can heal. You don’t have to get a diagnosis and think this is your destiny. This is how you’re just gonna survive living with these struggles.

Hilary Boynton (07:08):

So, a woman in my cooking class is a photographer. Was a photographer, still is, and she, Mary Bracket, said she’s also on the GAPS diet and said, “We’ve gotta write a cookbook about this.” ‘Cuz there really wasn’t anything that was super beautiful and inspiring, and food is so, you know, visually appealing. You know, you have to kind of bring people in and whatnot. So, we ended up writing a cookbook designed for people to just like curl up in bed and be inspired that you can eat beautiful, delicious, nourishing foods and still heal. You don’t have to be going through this torturous thing. Then we handed over the cookbook to the publisher. My husband, at the (same) time was diagnosed with cancer, with throat cancer. So that really elevated our whole journey to health. Really, I say one of the main reasons I’m so passionate about helping kids and helping people in general is that it’s no way to live when you’re chasing health when you spend all your time and all your money chasing health. You know, we want these kids to be graduating from high school and pursuing their dreams, and not trying to figure out what’s wrong with them.

Paul Ward (08:17):

Sure.

Hilary Boynton (08:17):

Why they’re bloating or have depression or they’re anxious, or diabetic. There’s just answers through food.

Paul Ward (08:25):

Right. So, the book is, “The Heal Your Gut cookbook nutrient dense recipes for intestinal health using the GAPS Diet.”

Hilary Boynton (08:32):

Yes. Yes.

Paul Ward (08:32):

You’re making kind of old recipes new again, and bringing in different cultures and lots of color. I mean, I’ve been here at the school, and the kids are, of course, just really enjoying what you’re feeding them. They’re not throwing it away like you see in traditional schools. What are the recipes? How do you make that happen every day?

Hilary Boynton (08:56):

Yeah. Well, the recipes are really designed; so the GAPS Diet was created by a neurologist and a nutritionist who lives in England, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, and she healed her son of autism. So, it’s a really specific protocol of healing and sealing your gut so that you can eat whatever you want. Hopefully. Within reason. We don’t want anybody eating complete junk. But the idea is that you’re healthy and vibrant and strong, and so that if you do eat something that’s, you know, not the best, your body can handle that and that’s the way it should be. So, the foods are really traditional and that they’re all local and seasonal and made for maximum digestion and absorption of nutrition. So a lot of foods have to be given a lot of effort and prep outside of the body so that you can easily digest them and absorb the nutrition on the inside. For instance, like fermenting foods or soaking your nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes. We make all of our own homemade sourdough bread with locally grown grains that are freshly milled here in Pasadena. Then we do a long ferment here at the school. It’s quite different from anything you’ll see on the grocery store shelves.

Paul Ward (10:04):

You’re attending farmer’s markets. You’re out doing the shopping, getting the best ingredients to bring back to the school. You’re not having it delivered by a big corporate conglomerate.

Hilary Boynton (10:15):

That’s where I think a lot of schools get. You know, they’re kind of handcuffed in that they are relying on these big, you know, Ciscos and alike to deliver processed packaged foods. A lot of schools have just reheating kitchens now, so they’re not scratch cooking. When you scratch cook, you have full control over what goes into the food. We’re putting every ingredient into the foods that we’re serving up, so we’re responsible for that. We take that very seriously. I mean, as chefs, we’ve worn continuous blood glucose monitors, which is very cutting edge. They’re coming out more and more now and being more easily or readily available. They’re a monitor that will monitor your blood glucose levels. So if we’re feeding kids foods that are gonna spike their blood glucose levels all day long, like sugars and processed foods, you know, that’s obviously not good for their health.

Hilary Boynton (11:12):

So as a chef, if I wear this monitor and I know in good conscience that I’m feeding kids junky food. And know that it will spike, and what it’s doing to them, how can I, in good conscience, feed that to them? So, we, show up every day to keep these kids balanced and even, and (with a) steady stream of energy, and we’re educating the kids as they go through the line. You saw me today. You can’t just have a piece of, although it’s beautiful, sourdough with raw butter, it’s like, that’s not really a balanced meal. Like, have some protein and let’s add in some stuff. So, we’re at a point in humanity, really, where I feel like you can’t just drop off healthy foods to kids and expect them to eat it, which is really sad.

Paul Ward (11:51):

Sure.

Hilary Boynton (11:51):

That’s where we are. It takes those special relationships and the lunch leaders, or “The Soul Chefs,” we call ’em “School of Lunch Chefs,” that are gonna stand there day after day after day and tend to these kids and become that trusted resource and explain to them that the animals that we’re eating are from our favorite farmers. And we look these farmers in the eye and we know their best practices and that these animals have been out in the sunshine and pasture and living a good life. It’s really important for kids and parents to understand that because it’s very confusing. I was that kid that fell for the dietary dogma and trashed my health, you know? So, I can see it in some kids, you can become that kid that’s really rigid like I was, and you just stick with a narrative when really you have no idea how your brain is developing and your muscles and your body like, everything’s happening at this age.

Paul Ward (12:46):

Right. So, what does your day look like at the school? I mean, if you’re preparing everything from the scratch, you’re not, again, just taking the processed, you know, English muffins out of the box. What does it take to make that happen five days a week?

Hilary Boynton (13:02):

Yeah. So, it started after my husband was diagnosed with cancer, we ended up moving to California from Massachusetts and we stumbled upon this school, it was 30 kids at the time. Someone said, “Oh, there’s this great little nature-based school that started up and I arrived here to just check it out.” We’re like, “Oh, cool, we’ll go check it out.” The chef was like, “Oh, the kids just caught their own fish today, and we cooked it up.” Then she told me she really wanted to roast a whole goat. I was like, “Sold! We have to go here.” We got in and then as the school grew, they outsourced the food cuz it just was unmanageable for one person. That’s when I was like, “Wait a minute. This isn’t really aligned with what I signed up for.”

Hilary Boynton (13:39):

It just wasn’t jiving. So, I spoke to the head of the school as the snack coordinator and consultant to the lunch lady at the time. Then I just went to the farmer’s market, like you said, and I would get whatever I could, bright, fun, interesting things, and created this like, “Scene,” at snack. Soon enough the snack out shined the lunch program, and I was given the keys to the kitchen come Christmas time. I was just like, “Let’s just do this! Let’s go!” I had only ever cooked really for my own family of seven. I’ve never spent to this day a day in a commercial kitchen. So to get those systems up and running to figure out how to feed these kids this way that I knew was really important.

Hilary Boynton (14:21):

Day after day after day was super overwhelming. But I brought chefs from my friend and partner in School of Lunch, Chuck Barth, he runs Slow Food Ventura County. He brought in my first chef to help me out. She’s still here today. It really was just like bootstrapped. But we’ve developed over the past six years and the school has grown. We’re now feeding about 175 people a day. So, what I learned is that freedom is in the system. I didn’t know this at all, just being a home cook, I’m kind of like off the cuff, whatever, but Sure. Sunday night we’re feeding the sourdough starter for Mondays, making the dough, baking the bread at the end of the day. So Monday’s a huge prep day for the whole day.

Hilary Boynton (15:04):

We’re roasting our roast beef, we’re roasting our Turkey breasts, we’re preparing our garbanzo beans that are local from Larry Kandarian To-Go, or Koda Farms To-Go to be made into hummus the next day. We’re prepping our homemade pestos, we’re sprouting our almonds to make sprouted almond butters for the week. Then Tuesdays typically a chicken and rice. We’re roasting all the chickens, pulling all the meat off the bones, turning the bones into a bone broth. Wednesday we’re again making more sourdough (starters) for Thursday. Wednesday’s usually like a enchilada pie or a shepherd’s pie or something that, you know, we can put together. Then Thursday’s soups, salad focaccia. So that bone broth is put into the soups on Thursdays. Then Wednesday we’re salting the meats like a slow roasted pork shoulder or chuck roll, we’ll salt it on Wednesday, so it goes in the oven all day Thursday and slow roasts, so that Friday, all we have to do is pull the meat, cook up some veggies, and salads. So, it’s kind of this like this system that makes it so we can flow, and the chefs all get in the groove and we kind of know what we have to do to get to get it done.

Paul Ward (16:14):

That’s amazing. We switched it up here and you brought in other cultures, right? Chefs from other cultures.

Hilary Boynton (16:18):

Yeah. So, we have that was one of the biggest things when I, when I arrived in Los Angeles, I was just like, you know, come from the small little colonial town in Massachusetts to all of a sudden being in Los Angeles where there’s just like this melting pot from around the world. I felt almost like Western Price who had traveled the world because I would run into people, you know, at the butcher shop wherever I found somebody with an accent, I would pull them over and be like, “Hey, can you tell me how you ate growing up? And were you ever sick?” Across the board everyone was just like, when I show them my cookbook, they said this, “These are the foods we ate growing up and we were never sick. Now we’re seeing our children and our grandchildren struggling with disease and we don’t know what’s happening.”

Paul Ward (16:56):

Right.

Hilary Boynto (16:56):

But they’re losing sight of their traditional ways. But it’s hard, they’re in America where it’s just about fast and convenience and everyone’s taste buds are hijacked. So, I really set out on a mission to interview as many elders as I could to understand how they incorporated these foods into their daily lives. We bring people into the school to talk to our chefs, to talk to the kids, to cook with us. We had my friend Sandeep from Pure Indian Foods came from New Jersey and he makes the most beautiful homemade ghee. We used so much ghee here; it’s beautiful grass fed ghee. And he came, we did a whole Indian day.

Paul Ward (17:37):

For folks that are listening that don’t know what, what is ghee.

Hilary Boynton (17:39):

Ghee is a clarified butter. Basically, all the milk solids are removed and it’s just this beautiful fat It’s got a high smoke point. So we’re getting those fat valuable vitamins into the kids. It’s great for building the brain and makes things taste good. Fat is one of those things, going fat free for so long, I mean I didn’t realize how much flavor fat brings. So, so delicious. Then we also have chefs who we have a lot of Persians in our kitchen. So one of our chefs is from Iran and her mom came and we did a whole Persian day. Another chef is from Brazil and her mom just came to check it all out. She’s gonna come back and do a Brazilian day. So we’re really about exposing the kids to as much, you know, joy that comes from sitting and nourishing yourselves.

Paul Ward (18:29):

So it’s almost like a social studies class through food. You’re not just reading about Brazil or Iran or…

Hilary Boynton (18:36):

Right.

Paul Ward (18:37):

You know, wherever the chef is from, they’re Yeah. Experiencing it.

Hilary Boynton (18:41):

Yeah. It’s very cool. And that’s awesome, the fact that they’re all participating in it, right? They’re trying new things, then they’re watching their peers try new things, and we’re encouraging them. We want this to become normal for them. That this way of eating is normalized. I mean, we’re feeding kids K through 12 , and I think kindergarten has been here K, One, Two; for the last two or three years. It’s huge to have the kids when they’re that little. Cuz the first couple weeks they’re like, “Eh, sure. Like, this doesn’t look familiar, and I don’t think I want that.” We have some tears, and to the parents and the teachers (I’m) like, “Gimme two weeks with them.” You have to make it fun. Like you have to be dancing and they have to trust you and love you, and you get ’em to just try a little bite.

Paul Ward (19:24):

They’re used to tatter tots and peanut butter and jelly.

Hilary Boynton (19:26):

Right. Totally. It’s totally scary.

Paul Ward (19:27):

Sometimes with the crust.

Hilary Boynton (19:28):

But it becomes totally normal. You know, I don’t think most people know what it feels like to feel good. So, if all of a sudden, you’re truly nourished and satisfied…. We don’t do dessert here ever.

Paul Ward (19:41):

Really?

Hilary Boynton (19:41):

Maybe if we have a bumper crop of apples, we’ll make an applesauce or a plum, you know, stew down plums, a little raw cream on top, but they don’t need it. They’re satisfied. So, people think, “Oh, they gotta have dessert.” But we focus (on) savory over sweet, and our goal is to just keep them steady and nourished.

Paul Ward (20:00):

So, they’re not crashing at 10:30 in the morning.

Hilary Boynton (20:02):

Exactly. Exactly.

Paul Ward (20:03):

Cause they ate their Captain Crunch, and now the sugar high.

Hilary Boynton (20:05):

Yeah. That’s where we bring the parents in once a month for parents at lunch. That’s where it’s actually really cool. What I’ve recognized that this is a true bottom-up approach. The kids are the first in the door and they’re starting to eat it and they’re going home and saying like, “Mom, can you make fermented ginger carrots?” Or, “Can you make sourdough,” or “Miss Hillary’s broccoli is better than your broccoli,” or whatever it is. You know, the parents are like, “What’s going on at that school?”

Paul Ward (20:30):

Right.

Hilary Boynton (20:30):

We had a couple parents last year of first graders come to our training academy. One of ’em now works in our kitchen a couple times a week. So, they go home and then the parents come for lunch once a month and get exposed to what we’re doing. We expose them to our local farmers, and they get to sit down and eat this beautiful food. Hopefully it infuses into the home kitchen and becomes a way of life, and they’re connected to local places.

Paul Ward (20:51):

And you’ve started a training academy, correct? You’re running that once or twice a year?

Hilary Boynton (20:55):

We’re in our fourth year now of doing weeklong intensives in Topanga Canyon here at a retreat center where people come from all over the country. You don’t have to aspire to be a lunch lady in your kid’s school. You can just wanna learn for yourself. It’s really exciting. We’re getting a lot of 20 somethings too that are like figuring out that they don’t feel well, or they recognize how messed up the food system is and there has to be a better way. Or they’re studying to be registered dieticians. There’s a whole movement now of real food. Registered dieticians who have come through and done internships at our kitchen. Or come to the training academy. We immerse them in nature, connect them to nature, connect them to themselves, their community, the local food system.

Hilary Boynton (21:40):

We run them down to the farmer’s markets. Last year we went to Apricot Lane Farm and had a tour of their farm and cooked in their test kitchen. It’s super transformative in that you’re getting your hands on kind of making a bone broth or ferments or raw dairy. We have specialists come in, like Mark McAfee who owns Organic Pastures, raw farmers by Organic Pastures, which is the raw dairy. He comes and does a whole lecture to talk about what is raw dairy. Cuz you know, I did not know at all. So, a lot of people, it’s super, super brand new. But once you start to just dip your toes in the water, it’s just liberating to understand the power of food, and that we do have agency over our own health and that we don’t have to live in fear. When you build a healthy immune system, you can go out and do whatever you want.

Paul Ward (22:31):

Right. That’s awesome. I would think that for the students, the kids too who are eating such healthy food, it’s almost like a, you know, biology botany class at the same time and they’re growing a lot of their own fruits and vegetables too.

Hilary Boynton (22:44):

Yeah. When my kids were in eighth grade, my triplets, they’re now 19, but they started a farm right down here where we, I went to Larry Canen, who’s my friend at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Well, he goes to several, but I see him there. He’s up in Las Osos. Beautiful man, beautiful farm. He gave us some bell beans that we used as a cover crop. This was just like hard pack, just like this driveway. Now it’s this beautiful flourishing garden. Apricot Lane Farms mentored us on compost teas and whatnot. We’re in no waste kitchen as well. We compost everything. We’re really pride ourselves on not wasting all this beautiful food. We talk to the kids about that too. “Take what you want and you can always come back for seconds.” We don’t wanna have a bunch of waste. We’re so blessed to have this food. They just delivered some fresh Swiss char and some carrots and some kale. It’s so super special when they can walk through the line and we’re like, “You guys grew this. You have to try it.” Then of course they’re like, “Okay.” They try it and they, the kind of closed loop comes full circle for them, which is cool to see.

Paul Ward (23:54):

That’s, that’s awesome. You’re also making the program expandable, so you’re working with other lunch ladies, and other people throughout the country to kind of get the word out on what can be done throughout the country.

Hilary Boynton (24:06):

Yeah, I mean, I would say, “I can’t change a million schools, but I can train a million people.” I feel like that’s where like, I can’t go in and fix all the problems that every school has, but the people like me that are passionate about their community and their school, where their children go or they’re a Y M C A or just whatever they wanna, you know, step in and try and make a difference or wherever they can, what was your question? I don’t wanna go roundabout.

Paul Ward (24:32):

Expanding.

Hilary Boynton (24:33):

Oh, expanding. So, we usually tell schools, of course we’ll consult with them. That’s a big part of what we do, but we love to have them send a chef or two from their community so that we can really infuse principles. So we’ve had people from chefs from Miami from this year we have from Boston, we had from Arizona, California, down Laguna Beach. Texas. So it’s really cool that people are starting to implement, you know, this same program and systems.

Paul Ward (25:07):

That’s awesome. Hopefully it takes off and that becomes the new normal, not just junk and processed foods.

Hilary Boynton (25:15):

Yeah. I think we’re really at a point where it has to change. We have over, I would say 60% of our kids with a chronic illness and 90% of our population is metabolically unhealthy. So, it’s like what we’re doing is not all food related, food related. Like prevention, I was talking to you before, like what my family went through, you know, for 15, 20 years. Sometimes, you know, we’re still in it. You know, disease can be long term. When kids are struggling, it’s so painful as a mom to watch that. So, if I can prevent all of these things, I know are so preventable. I mean so much of it. To see kids on lots of medications at such a young age, it’s like, you don’t like my son with eczema. You don’t have to be given a diagnosis and think that this is it. Food is really magical in the way that I mean, in two months he was completely healed. Now he’s 16 and has no asthma, no allergies, no eczema.

Paul Ward (26:09):

That’s amazing. So, I wanna read a quote from your book. This is from Sally Fallon Morrell from the Weston A. Price Foundation. “If you think healing diet means renunciation of delicious foods, you are in for surprise. The Heal Your Gut cookbook shows that you can enjoy every morsel while your body recovers from a lifetime of nutrient deficiencies and processed food. It is a wonderful contribution to the literature on the topic.” I just thought that was kind of a good overall summation of what you’ve put together in the book. And of course, here at the school.

Hilary Boynton (26:42):

Yeah. Oh, thank you. Well, I feel like we’re overfed and undernourished. We have access to so much, but we’re really eating empty calories that are not satiating us and not supplying the adequate nutrition that we need to thrive and to build muscles and brains and all that to become healthy, conscious, connected humans. So, I think we need to really accept where we are and step into the work. I think that, like I say with my book, the hardest part about this, you know, special healing protocol is deciding to do it. Cause you’re just like, oh, if you think too much about it this is gonna be hard. But life is hard, but there’s nothing more rewarding than having your health. You’re rich, rich, rich when you have your health. When you don’t have your health, you have nothing. That’s

Paul Ward (27:26):

That’s true. You know, you can’t really do anything.

Hilary Boynton (27:27):

All the money in the world doesn’t give you your health back. Our children really are our most precious resource, and it is such a beautiful thing to work in purpose every day to change, hopefully, the trajectory of their health. If we’re feeding them, we have their stomachs for six hours a day, <laugh>, 30% of their meals are right here.

Paul Ward (27:48):

Right. That’s awesome.

Hilary Boynton (27:48):

So that’s a huge opportunity to really lay that foundation and, give them a launching pad to go out with the knowledge to…

Paul Ward (27:56):

The they go home and say, “Mom, why don’t you cook like <laugh> lunch lady?”

Hilary Boynton (27:59):

Well, one kid went home. He is like, “You know, I had the most delicious fennel today.” You know, he’s in kindergarten, and mom’s like, “What?” Soo it’s just cool. Most kids don’t have, even if we’re just giving them the vocabulary of like, “raw dairy or kefir.” Like today they’re doing beet kvass shots, you know, I’m like, “Wow.” Telling them, “This is a blood cleanser, a liver tonic, and they’re just like, “Cool, let’s do it.” You know? Or I’ll bring out one of our companies that we support, Masienda, which is right here in L.A. They’re doing amazing work. They’re sourcing corn from Oaxaca because most of the corn in the United States is not so great. Right. So beautiful Nixtamalized corn and they also have hibiscus and beans as well, but they have these chicatanas, which are flying ants that are dried and seasoned.

Hilary Boynton (28:47):

So, I’ll just bring those out. I’m like, “Who wants to try a flying ant?!” You know, the kids are like,”Okay!” You know, and then all of a sudden, like the whole fifth grade class is like, you know, downing these, but they’re filled with vitamin K2. So, it’s just making it fun. And that’s what really needs to happen. I say we’re, “Joyfully.” I just added the joyfully cause we’re, Chuck always says, my partner says, you know, “We’re making a joyful noise.” And I said, “We’re joyfully disrupting the trend of chronic illness in this next generation of kids.”

Paul Ward (29:12):

That’s awesome.

Hilary Boynton (29:12):

You have to make it fun. Right. Otherwise, it can be a slog, <laugh>

Paul Ward (29:16):

Absolutely.

Hilary Boynton (29:17):

It’s gotta be fun. And the gratitude, the kids are so gracious, and we train them with that too. You know, look your servers in the eye. These chefs worked really hard and give them a, “Please and a thank you,” and show that gratitude. So, we’re trying to build better humans. That’s

Paul Ward (29:32):

That’s wonderful. So Hillary Boynton, thank you so much for being our special guest on this edition of Farm Talk. We’ve loved having you.

Hilary Boynton (29:38):

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you spreading the word, and then spreading our message. It’s really important and we appreciate it.

Paul Ward (29:45):

Absolutely. We will get the word out as much as we can. Absolutely. And of course, we want to thank our sponsors, Opus Escrow and The Money Store. And be sure to tune in next time for another edition of Farm Talk.