Hello, everybody. I'm so happy you're here. I've got something important to share with you. It's a mantra, say yes, adventure follows, then growth. It's a simple one, and I didn't even discover it until I was 50 years old, but once I figured out this mantra, it explained perfectly my whole life story. See, I evolved from a girl growing up in Nashville dreaming about becoming an actress to becoming an accountant, which let's just say I did not particularly enjoy.

Sure, it felt safe and secure, but I didn't like it. As soon as I realized that I walked out of that job and I never looked back. I became a model and then a chef and then a talk show host who had to take me so long in life to really find my groove. That's something I'm going to try and figure out with you right here running away from.

It's hard to. Especially when there's been no news from one jury, this is say yes with Carla Hall every week on this podcast, I'm going to talk to people about how they have evolved in their lives and what happens when they say yes, even when it's very. For the past few months since this whole pandemic started, I think going online every day on my Instagram live to do what I'm calling recess, I commit to moving or playing or dancing for just 10 minutes.

There's a lot of hula hooping and skip ball and jump rope. But the one thing that I know when I shake my booty, I change my mood.

You guys are going to step into the weekend like this? Oh, yes, that's right.

It's become a joy booster, a mood lifter and a fear factor.

It's a chance to do something different, to do something silly, to join with the community. I now have a recessed community. It blows my mind each and every day and each day I've got to work up a little courage, put myself out there, actually do something I'm not comfortable doing, which is why my first guest for say yes couldn't be more perfect. Kristen Bell, what struck me about Kristen is that, yes, she's princess on in the Frozen movies.

Yeah, she's Save the World on the good place.

One question. Where am I? Who are you and what's going on? You, Eleanor Shell struck are dead. Your life on earth has ended and you're now in the next phase of your existence in the universe.

Cool. And sure, she's got this really amazing marriage with fellow actor DAX Shepard, but she's also not afraid to show her messy side.

She's not afraid to admit that she's still a work in progress, that she's still trying all kinds of new things. And you know what? You just got to do it like the world does not watch it.

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Well, I'm sitting in the laundry room, actually the utility room, I am sitting in the well, I suppose now it's the second grade classroom, also known as our guest bedroom. And there's toys strewn all over the floor. There's a big chalkboard. There is a rug pad, no rug. OK, so just picture like this sort of installation, gray matted because I believe one of the dogs peed on it recently, so we rolled it up and then forgot about it.

OK, this is the bed that my my two daughters and I sleep in since my husband broke his shoulder. And so, yeah, it has remnants of the three of us living out of this little room.

All right. So he gets the big room and you all get the the classroom. Yes, basically. Well, first of all, this bed in here is the king size bed. It's the only king size bed. So it's all three of us. And the first night I was a little nervous to roll onto his shoulder. And the girls also with anxiety, Corona School starting blah, blah, blah, they're just always begging for someone to sleep with them.

So it's been for a couple of weeks now that it's been the three of us in this front room. And and Daddy's just sort of had his kingdom in the other bedroom, which I support. I think when you just got surgery, you're allowed to sleep in and go to bed later and have your own suite. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And not have somebody roll on your your broken ribs. Yeah.

You know, so at least we could do for the man, you know. I mean, I want to talk about you and Dex because with me and Matthew being home together in the beginning of the pandemic and this is this is more time than we have spent together during this pandemic than we have honestly in the last probably eight years because I worked in New York and I would come home every weekend.

So this is the biggest stretch of time. And we you know, he will he will say something to me like.

May I ask you something, and I always know that it's going to be something that I did like asking me really not to do something, and I get ready to laugh because he's trying to couch it like that.

But what I love that you call you call this period of time or when you and DAX go through that, like, house cleaning, like your house cleaning phase.

This is one topic I actually love talking about because I want to make sure that as anyone who's sort of showing themselves publicly, I think should be pretty transparent about the ups and the downs. And that's one thing I really tried to do. And so DAX and I made a sort of an agreement early on that we would be honest about our fights, that we wouldn't sort of pretend we just had this effortless marriage. We are both so bullheaded and stubborn and strong willed, and it takes a lot for those four to people like that to stay married.

And we were hitting a house cleaning, which is what I call the sort of big fight that marriage is getting to like every two years, the really big one.

We were hitting that right when covid began. So and it was odd. And it's not the amount of time we spend together. What's crazy is that he and I spend when we spend more time together, we're better. It's when we don't have a team activity, when we don't have a collective goal, like a job, like when we work together or a project at home. Those are great for us. We were actually spending too much time apart because of the business of life and then we were kind of both feeling a little bit ignored.

Like it's sort of everything's very usual. There's nothing crazy. I didn't feel like you helped enough around the house. He didn't feel like I was connecting with him enough. And we right when the doors closed on the world, we were having to sit next to each other and we hadn't worked any of this out or talked it out. And, you know, it's funny because like and Doyle uses this same example. I got it from her. But it was really a case of is he going to chew that loudly every time?

Is she going to leave every damn cupboard door open? And the answer was just yes to both of those things. And we had a big knockdown, drag out fight. We talked about everything that we wanted to change and what we needed. We tried to be great listeners to each other. We said a lot of nasty suares during the fight. We got over it and we decided that we need to really live in grace for the next couple of months with this whole thing going on, I need to be like, is he going to chew that loud?

Yeah. Yes. Then that's OK. I'm going to give him Grace. Yes, I leave the cupboard open because I'm going to come back there tomorrow and I'm going to open it again. So why not just leave it open now?

So I'm allowed to in my family and Matthew has this thing. He's he's sensitive to noises. He's always telling me that I can make putting Krunch if I'm eating popcorn, I need to take a whole fist of popcorn and just keep pushing it in my mouth because I like the crunch. Whereas Matthew eats one kernel at a time, I'm like, I don't know how that tastes.

Good. Yeah, you got to give each other grace. You got to be aware of that. It's a sensitivity. And then he's got to be aware of how great you are besides the chewing. Right. Look, we all have to just give each other grace, because other than that, you guys probably work really well together. Oh, my gosh.

OK, there's something else that I realize that you do so well. And I am like, oh, my gosh. And I'm sure you can't guess it in a million years. Skip, you are a great skipper. Wait, what you skip really well. Thank you.

Is there footage I'm going to do like to frolic and skipping is part of that. I do. I do love a good skip. You never talked about that before.

I know you were frolicking and skipping in your video, your African video when you were in Tanzania.

Oh, yeah. I was like, I mean, the animals are great running with the giraffes. That's that was great.

But you came on and you were skipping and you were frolicking. I was like, look at this girl. Oh, man. Was captivating. Yes, because it's joy.

It was joy. It felt so joyous. And so I'm all about, you know, holding on to that childlike thing inside of myself.

Yes, me too. In fact, I literally I'm all sweaty right now because I just finished a dance party with my daughter. We do like dance interpretation.

Often we're in the living room, will do songs from Hamilton or Rent or dear Evan Hansen. It's mostly musical theater because it has a lot of story in it and we will just be tumbling and screaming to each other. And it's all our personal performance. You just got to do it, whatever's in your heart. We've been doing the Hairspray soundtrack in the Annie soundtrack a lot recently and they've been getting on their roller skates. They're five and seven. They've been putting their roller skates on, grabbing a broom.

And going throughout the house and blasting, it's a hard not life, acting like they're orphans and their life is so awful, they just have to clean all day and it is so freaking funny.

OK, so when I do recess tomorrow and I'm on my Instagram, I'm going to give you all a shout out because I'm going to put on my roller skates, I'm going to grab my room and I'm going to go around the house.

I kid you not. I'm telling you I am. I am going. I promise you. I promise myself I am going to do that because that sounds like such a good time.

I'll be watching. Is there ever a time when you were super unsure about something but you said yes anyway, as if you had that safety net?

Oh wow. I feel like almost everything I've ever done has been that. I mean, I was asked to dance and sing a number from fame on the Emmy's, like really early on in my career when I was on Veronica Mars. And I thought, this is insane. I don't have the dance training for this. And I said, yes, I was way in over my head there. But I always, even if I am qualified, I struggle with, like the night before, every job.

I'm like, I don't know how to act. I do not know how to do this. I should not have taken this. I don't know what I'm doing.

What do you think you discovered about yourself when you said yes to to doing that on the Emmys?

Well, it went fine. I guess what I discovered is that you're going to have people around you, whether it's in a nine to five job that you don't know how to do, where you have someone sitting next to you, or it's a theater performance where you have a cast and crew, you just got to lean on the people around you. It's one of the biggest lessons I took from doing the good place was the human connection cannot be underestimated.

And I was so nervous about doing that same thing until I realized, oh, I was with ten incredibly qualified backup dancers who would adjust the choreography if I couldn't do it. There was so many solutions if I was just able to get out of my own head and ask for them. And that that did sort of start my wheels turning about how important it is to admit when you think you can't do something and just ask people for help, just say, like, I don't think I know how to do this.

Can you explain it to me again or could you give me more support in this area? And every time I've ever done that, I've been met with shockingly positive results.

I mean, that is the brave and transparent thing to do, right? To just admit that you don't know something. It's actually the shortest distance between two lines.

It is this weird sort of a catch. Twenty two for human beings. Right. Like we my husband and I love talking about the human brain. He he studied anthropology, which he'll tell you every time you listen to his podcast, we talk about like how interesting it is, how difficult it is for humans to be vulnerable when really that is the key to everything. But we think we have to put on this air of perfection of no at all.

Miss, and don't get me wrong, I live in a house full of it, all of which I am one. But when it comes to asking for help, we try to be very honest with our kids for sure about how important that is and how many solutions are out there. I do think it's also teaching people about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. I think because that translates to adulthood really well. There's two mindsets that you can have, and it's like a growth mindset.

It allows you to persevere through failures because effort is required to build new skills. And a fixed mindset is where you avoid challenges. My kids go to a school that harps on growth mindset so much the teachers are saying, OK, I want everyone to write down three things they think are really important for our class code because they want this participation mentality. They want you to basically be able to grow and contribute even if you're not sort of chosen. It's really interesting to see a brain grow up when you're exposing them to a growth mindset where you really are trying to learn all the things you can.

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All right, you all hands down a career defining recipe and an iconic dish was the chicken pot pie that I made on Top Chef.

So many people still to this very day, 13 years later asking me about that dish.

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Every culture has its own form of biscuits, and making biscuits is a great way to come together and share and celebrate our differences as we create something that we all have in common.

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Well, speaking about growth mindset, I absolutely love the good place and you have said that you're so preoccupied with what it means to be a good person. Tell me what you mean by that.

Well, I know in my bones that we are pack animals, right? We're community creatures, whether we were, you know, tons of time ago living in a tribe together or it's now where we're living in cities and countries and hopefully global communities that are nice to each other. I guess what that means to me is you have to take into consideration not just your needs, but the needs of the other person. And that means your friends, your family, the people in your workplace, while not ignoring your own needs.

I mean, I am kind of a co-dependent, so I have to often remind myself, like I you have to stand up for yourself or what have you. And I've gotten really good at it later in life. But I really subscribe to the sort of the Buddhist philosophy of if you're about to get hit by a bus, I push you out of the way, not because you were about to get hit, but because I was to. Because you are me.

I am you. So when I'm thinking about ways that I can simply be better in a way that it's a little bit like the good place where it's a game in my head, I don't beat myself up if I don't do it perfectly. I just admit when I was wrong and try to rectify it. But during the day, if I want to if I'm looking at my sister who comes over and is in our pod and I'm thinking, I'm so grateful for her, well, then I turn that into what can I do to say that I can either say it or I can also order her favorite cookies.

My love languages is giving gifts and I really enjoy that because it makes it makes me feel good when other people are feeling good because we're a community. I mean, I don't really know any other way to say it other than that. That. I've tried to live just where I make myself happy, and it doesn't work. Yeah, I love that you dropped in love language. Thank you for that. Yeah. My mind is words of affirmation and Matthews's quality time and touch on my Dax's is quality time and touch.

That's so interesting because I've noticed that since I've been sleeping in this front room with my girls, he often will like put his hands on my shoulders or if we sit down on the couch together, he'll have his hand on my knee. And it occurs to me to think about the why a lot, because I love dissecting people and I'm like, oh, the Y is because, like, we're not snuggling at night because he's got this injury and I have to be careful with him.

And he actually physically needs touch to survive, you know, because that's definitely one of his languages.

I mean, you've done you've done so many things. I mean, podcasting, acting, singing, book writing and Lobello are their new ambitions that you want to explore.

Sheesh. I don't know, because I got to be honest, each one of these things has come up pretty organically and it's come up either by luck at the right time or by an inventive idea that that felt like it had magic around it. Like I like I just wrote a children's book a couple of months ago called The World Needs More Purple People. I was like, Oh yes, baby. I was like, no, like, I'm going to be an author.

Never. I can barely string a coherent linear sentence together. I'm like, I'm all over the map. I talk like a firework. Like, I didn't think that was going to be me, but I was talking with my friend Banhart a couple of years ago, two years ago, about the sort of all the divisiveness in the political spectrum that our children were sort of absorbing. They were seeing us and them. They were seeing red and blue.

And how do we talk to them about the fact that they can make their own decisions and they don't have to be one thing because their family is. And what what are the things that LINKOUS What makes purple? Right. And so we were like, oh, what are all the things we can agree on? Laughing a lot, asking great questions, using your voice, you know, and then now I'm an author, which seems crazy to me, but it's been a fun road.

And I, I mean, I will say the only thing that I hope comes next or in the future is I love singing so much and I love when I can do a project that incorporates that. So I hope they make frozen three, four or five and six.

I love that maybe purple people will turn into an animated film and then there will be songs that would be great.

Maybe my dream to have it be some sort of like an animated, even a cartoon on television where it was just getting that message across to kids that there are there are character traits that are important, not sides right there. There is a yeah. A way of thinking like a growth mindset, listening to other people at a critical thinking and individuality and celebrating your individuality and knowing that you you know, you may be different from your neighbor, but that's kind of what makes this country great.

And to celebrate those differences and to honor them and to and to help when the differences are not OK, when the differences are like socioeconomic and people are struggling, then you step in critical thinking and growth mindset. It's so important to me. I would love to see those exposed to kids in a Purple People cartoon.

Honestly, when I was reading the book in my head, I was I was walking around saying the world needs more purple people.

And I was like, Will you do our theme song? Will you do our theme song? I will totally do your theme song. Oh, my God. Yes. Purple people of. But I was thinking about what you were talking about, the differences in how this came up organically. My second cookbook is Carla's Comfort Foods. Favorite dishes from around the world, I guess is just before twenty twelve the next election that Obama was running and everybody is talking about their differences and everything.

And so I decided to do this book where I take an ingredient like spinach and I show it four different ways around the world. I take rice four different ways around the world. You know, love that. You look at the Chinese, you look at Haitian's, you look at Africans, you know, nobody's going to say, why do you do your rice like that? You're like, oh, that's how you make your rice. OK, this is how we make out.

There's stories there. And you're not just doing something about food. You're seeing people, you're showing people. And, you know, one of the reasons I love being a storyteller is because it's what brings people together when you can find a common theme. And is the same thing we try to do in purple people like nobody can argue that it's not fun to laugh. I don't care who you are. Right. You know what I mean. It is fun to laugh and you cannot be angry if you're laughing.

That is something that every single human being can agree on. And when you show the things that make a similar. It's just so much stronger than showing the differences, so any time you can link people together through food, through books, through stories, through anything, it's powerful, it's incredibly powerful.

But it also shows us humility. And my recess that I do every day came from that being very anxious during this time. And I started going out and just playing games like bouncy ball, skip ball, jump rope, hula hoop, you know, for ten minutes and I go live.

And yesterday I was just I was just talking to this community that I've built. And I was talking to a woman named Chef Xana who lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. And here we are talking about our food and the commonalities. When I left that live, I said to people, if you look around and you're seeing the same people that you communicate with every single day, you have homework and your homework is to go and talk to somebody that you don't know who is completely different than you are.

I love this so much for a variety of reasons. One of which there's a book that I just read called The Body Keeps the Score that talks about how important it is to do a voluntary physical activity with another human being. And it's about trauma victims like people who have sort of experienced traumatic events and they hold them in their body. In this this researcher and and psychologist discovered that talk therapy was helpful, but also doing something voluntarily physical with someone else, like he has all of his his patients join a drum circle, join a choir, join a yoga class, those that doing them together to say nothing of the physical activity that humans just simply do not get enough of.

We just I mean, it's so annoying. Like, I hate exercise more than anything, but I do it every single day because my mental health depends on it. It's so necessary. I love that you're doing that. I want to join that.

Well, it's random. The times are random, but there every day.

I love it. I love it. That's it is. It's really so it's so important because we forget it. We so easily forget. One of the things that made me feel safest in my life was right after I got pregnant and I was like really nervous and I felt like this feels parasitic. What is happening my body now, my body anymore. And it occurred to me, hey, Kristen, are you the first woman in the world that's ever had a baby?

Nope. And I was like, oh, my God, it's so humbling to realize you're part of a group. And it's just that's such a safe feeling for me to know that other people are out there. Other people have done it. Other people have had the high moments. You've had the low moments that you've had lower moments than you could imagine. And to think about all of it gets you outside your head. My husband is fifteen years sober this year, and they talk so much about in the in his community like that.

Self-esteem comes from esteemable acts and and is like if he's feeling really like low from a sobriety standpoint, he'll go, oh shit, I got to pick up the phone and ask if anybody's moving, if I can help with anything. And it's like annoying to do. But he does it and then he's like, oh yeah. Brian needed help with X, Y, Z or Joe needed to vent. I did that and now I feel great. Yeah.

Volunteering does so much for other people, but it does a lot for yourself. So much, 100 percent.

You mentioned mental health. How do you take care of your mental health, I mean, during this pandemic or just in life in general?

Well, I talk about it. There should be no shame in admitting like I feel gross today. I hate everybody. I don't want to get out of bed. Like, you got to say that I have this sort of this was ended up being a song and frozen, but like this mantra of just do the next right thing, like when I'm feeling really depressed, I just got to do the next right thing. And that's standing up at a bed and the next right thing is walking to the bathroom.

And then the next right thing is brushing my teeth. And it's a very one day at a time mentality, you know, mental health. I think it's a spectrum for different people. You could have a depressed three months. Never do it again. You may be like me who is needed a medication since you were eighteen years old. Like, it's it's all so different. There's no shame in any of it. But acknowledging it is the first step.

And then you've got to find out all the tools and you've got to see what works for you. Like for me, I have to exercise every day. Otherwise I'm just grumpy, I'm grumpy and I'm sad and the weight of the world feels like too much. So that's why we do those dance parties with our girls.

And but there's also language you can use. Like, I am willing to do this. I am the kind of person who does this as opposed to I want to do this. Like that's I think why New Year's resolutions don't work very well, because you set a goal. You want to be the person that hikes every day. Well. Or not, until you're going to be the type of person that is willing to hike every day. One hundred percent.

Yeah, right. It's exercise. It's also taking time for myself, which is uniquely hard for me, because when I don't feel like I'm of service, I don't really know what to do. And that's my co-dependency. But I also know that if I'm too much running around for everyone else, I get depleted. So I have to stay mentally and check of, like, is this the time that I actually need to go into my bedroom, put in an audio book that's about God knows what, and just sit for 10 minutes in my own head?

That might be this time. And I say that to my kids to like I need a little privacy right now because my self care, I've realized in my thirties involves a lot of introverted things that I love that I that when I do that, when I feed that introvert, which I didn't for many, many years, when I feed her, she's I'm so much happier.

I love that you're saying that because I people think of me as an extrovert and I'm actually borderline introvert extrovert, so I can do a lot out and then I have to come in and recharge and I feel the same way.

And isn't it interesting to be on that line and try to figure out where you're what you need more of? Because my instinct is always to be like do more, but sometimes it's not. It's like, no, this is the time. I actually need to close the doors and tell my husband and my kids and my friends to go away. And I and sometimes it's even just playing on my phone. I just need to go into the bedroom, have no one around me and like, be on words with friends because it's just for me, there's no stakes.

There's no there's no stakes. There's no you know, it's just just just for me. I get to choose it. And twenty minutes of that fills me up so much. What do you do when you're when you need to go into that introvert?

I listen to Audible So a lot of books on audible. I love crafts. I love doing things with my hands. So I will go and I'll cut pictures out.

And then just because it feels good. Right, like it doesn't it doesn't have to be a single other reason because other people will be like, how could that possibly help me? It's like, bro, just try it. Yeah.

I go out, I give kids chalk and I go out and draw things on the street or on our sidewalk. And I say to my husband, I'm like, I know it's going to rain tomorrow. Right? He's like, actually know it's going to be another week, but that's fine.

But, you know, it's that it's having something like doing something that's completely different than what I normally do. But it's also for me and it can be a silly it can be something that I'm working towards.

I love that so much. I like knitting a ton to do.

You know, I try I try to knit. I love it. I've been working on the scarf for about five years for somebody.

But, you know, but I do I love I love the sound of the needles. Oh yeah. What I'll tell you is like it's it's hard, it seems hard in the beginning. And then you pass a point and then all of a sudden you're an expert knitter. It's like you're a beginner or an expert. There's like it's so once you stick with it for a little bit, you can find that at least for me, I need a sweater during quarantine wet and I have never been prouder.

I will send you a picture of the sweater. I had to unravel the top of the sweater four times and the top of the sweater, which is really small. It's the size of about like a washcloth. It took me six weeks, six weeks because I was just getting a stitch wrong. And I was like, nope, I want this to be good. I'm going to unravel it and I'm just going to try the whole thing again until it becomes smooth.

And when I finish this sweater, I have not felt more like a gold medal winning Olympic athlete ever in my life.

See that? But that is so. And then you get the benefits of like self care, mental health honer giving someone something. I mean, it's like all that whole package.

And I feel like the key for me was self care is it has to be done. And it only I care about. Yeah. Like a family dinner. Sometimes cooking can feel like self care for me, but but only if I've seen like the recipe online. I've been dying to make it like figure out how to make non bread. That would be so cool. But if it's just like making dinner for everyone, it's not as self care. For me, it has to be the sweater.

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I have one small little segment at the end of my podcast called Biscuit Time, because in real life, one of my favorite things to do is to go up to strangers and ask them, hey, do you know how to make biscuits? And they usually say, no. And I'm like, hey, let's let's make biscuits together.

But I know I freakin love that. And maybe one day we'll make biscuits together.

But I love, love, love that. I so love making biscuits with strangers. But these days getting in front of a group is not really easy or possible. So I just I decided to wrap this whole thing up in a in a few questions and, you know, just little quick ish questions. So are you going to do it?

I'm ready. All right. How would you describe your community and who do you choose to surround yourself with? Oh, um. I surround myself with people that are willing to learn. That's number one. One of the reasons I fell in love with my husband is because he worked so hard to be sober. And in that community, you got to be willing to learn and evolve around every corner. You've got to take one day at a time and you have to learn something new.

And tomorrow you're different and you got to learn something new. We have this joke in our friendship group. It's everyone's coachable. So like, for instance, like our friend Jess, who's done, like, every self-help seminar ever. He's done like Landmark, like everything you can imagine. And I'll walk in and I'll, I don't know, set my purse down too hard or something and huff and he'll go, OK, are you coachable? And you're allowed to answer in that moment, are you coachable?

And I'll say yes and he'll go when you walk in like that. I just don't feel very welcome or whatever it is. And we do it when we're playing games. He'll go, Are you coachable? Because he's been teaching us Spade's? We've been playing spades so much.

And I love spades, dude. Biscuits and spades, purple people.

Oh, my God. We have so much to do together. But yeah, I think that's so true. Being coachable is my number one and having something to be joyful about. It doesn't have to be every moment. No one has to be happy all the time. But what somebody that has a passion, even if that passion is just making good jokes, which is usually the only passion that my friends have I love.

All right. Next question. What issue is closest to your heart at the moment? This biscuit time, it takes a while to make biscuits. So what what issue is closest to your heart at the moment?

Oh, wow, this is a hard one. I don't know how I could choose one. I'm going to be honest. I don't know how I can choose one because it's got to be broad, like leaving this earth better than I found it, because I am committed to learning so much right now about the current state of our world and have been exposed to so many things in the Black Lives Matter community that I didn't know about. I didn't know about redlining.

And I, I grew up in Detroit. I was like, I'm not a racist. Then read how to be an anti racist and white fragility and went like, woops, guess there's still a lot I can learn. Also, I work with no kid hungry a ton, which is one of the things of the problems of kids being out of school is there are my daughter goes to school, that's fifty percent title one, which means fifty percent of the kids live on or below the poverty line and they receive a free lunch.

And some of these people, some of these kids that aren't in school right now, they don't have enough to eat because they relied on the school to give them breakfast and lunch.

Thirty eight million kids. It's a lot. It's thirty eight million kids.

That is like not I have two kids and I think that's too many kids. I can't imagine. Thirty eight million. I've been working a lot with no kid hungry, figuring out how to do the distribution like that they have.

And that's an incredibly important one to me because it's a deep issue that is not just about stifling the hunger. It is about how dare you ask a child to sit in an eight a.m. math class when they have an empty belly, they cannot be asked to concentrate. There is a human need that needs to be filled before you're allowed to open a multiplication problem for them. Those would probably be the top two.

Here's a lighter on the lighter side. What's the funniest thing your kids have said or done this week?

Oh, my gosh. Oh, here we go. Who was this morning? Now, listen, I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. And let me start by saying I don't care to give me any advice. You guys want any of these listeners. You're you're welcome to tell me. I'm a terrible parent. I don't care. I'm a great parent. I think I'm learning every day and let me stress that it's non-alcoholic.

OK, so my husband brought home a six pack of modules last night and my daughter's often ask for modules. They've been at restaurants and ordered beers. They've said, do you have any modules? And the reason for this is because when we first had our child and my husband would put her in the Baby Bjorn and we'd walk around the neighborhood, he'd pop a non alcoholic beer in his hand and the baby would like at it and put the rim in her mouth, blah, blah, blah.

So it's a sentimental thing for my girls, right? Makes them feel close to their dad. Last night we're eating lasagna and tuna, noodle and beans, and the three of them each have nodules open, OK, because they're like, can I have another Dools? He's like, sure, because we try to sorry this answer so long, but it deserves an explanation or like I mean there's nothing wrong with it. It's just essentially a bubbly juice.

Right. There's nothing in it. We also talk to them very much about sobriety and the importance of it and why Daddy can't drink, etc.. So this morning I set them in their Zoom's and they have like fifteen minute breaks where the. They are allowed to jump around and grab a snack and wiggle it out, and I walk in to check on them at like nine, 30, and both of them are drinking and nodules on their zooms in their class.

Yes. Oh, they're both just sitting in their dulais. And I'm like, what must these other parents and teachers think of me? And then I remind myself, you don't care, Cristen. They can pretend like you're doing something wrong. I would argue that I'm not because it's non-alcoholic. And if anything, where it opens up the discussion for why Daddy has to drink non-alcoholic beer because some people lose their privileges with drinking, drinking's not always safe. And yes.

So I walked in and both my children were sipping a beer in their 9:00 and Zoome five and seven. There you go.

And let your kids drink non-alcoholic beer.

I have enjoyed this so much. There's a lot here that I feel like I'm going to walk away with. And this has been so enjoyable.

You're right back at you. Well, I'm going to join your recess. And also I would love to make biscuits with you sometime. Kind of that.

Like, seriously. I mean, I can do it on Zoome. I'm telling you, you guys should do it on Zoome.

We should do it. Thank you so much. It's so nice to talk to you. Bye bye.

We're going to wrap up every episode with a segment I'm calling this week's ingredient. Each week I'll share with you an ingredient. It could be an actual food ingredient or it could just be some action to make your life a little different. So this week's ingredient is making mistakes. I can't believe I had to tell you to do that.

But as a chef, I love it when I'm giving a demo and something goes wrong because one, I can try to fix it. And that's a lesson or two, it just shows you look, everybody makes mistakes.

Look, I'm always saying what's cooking nuts? There are three stages. Not done, not done burnt. And I have burned my share of nuts.

From one tree, this is say yes with Carla Hall and remember, say yes, adventure follows, then growth. If you like our show, please give us a five star rating and a review and be sure to tell your friends subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, the wonder Apple. Wherever you're listening right now, join 100 plus in the one to react to listen ad free and the episode notes. You'll find some links and offers from our sponsors by supporting them.

You help us to our shows for free. You can also help us by filling out a short survey at one dotcom slash survey. If you want to check out my recess on Instagram live, you can find me at Carlia Hall, audio engineering and sound design by my man Marcelina The Al Pando produced by Meghan Monaco and Julia Shue, executive produced by Marshall Lui and Hernan Lopez for wondering.

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