“When most people go to the theater, they go to see the play, not to look at the stage,” Eduardo quips with his signature mix of philosophical seriousness and almost maniacal smile — a smile that belies old knowledge that he might’ve dug up in the backyard, but hasn’t shown you yet.

We’re standing in his kitchen — or stage in this context — but it’s more like a functional art gallery. He’s preparing a dish called choucroute for our adventure ahead: chopping homegrown herbs, boiling potatoes from the garden, spooning homemade sauerkraut and pickles into jars, and seasoning pork chops from a pig he killed and butchered himself. The light is dim and grey, and snow clouds are forming in the sky as Montana refuses to let spring, and definitely not summer, have a say in the weather.

There are a few more moments of stillness, broken only by the sharpening of the knife, the aluminum sound of mason jars lids being twisted off, the crescendoing bubble of boiling water, and the muffled flap of a robin’s last wingbeats that Eduardo’s cat has brought to contribute to our impending feast. Though appreciated, it will not be part of our meal.

Chef, entrepreneur, TV host, brand ambassador, and motivational speaker, Eduardo Garcia’s personal story has been told in a variety of formats, and many are familiar with his inspiring, death-defying perseverance, as chronicled in the documentary, Charged. But this is a different sort of story altogether, one where food is only one part of a much larger cast.

With the mise en scène complete, he launches into an explanation of what this is all about. “Early on in my career, I had a mentor tell me that there were plenty of other chefs who were better than me. But it was who I was and the way I did things that were unrivaled, and that is what made my food and the experiences I offered memorable and magnetizing. That stung at first, but over time I realized it was the key to my success. How do I set the table in a way that only I can? How do I weave stories and life into cooking experiences that people will never forget? To do this, I need to really celebrate all of these parts and bring them to the table. Not just the salt and pepper, or the T-bone steak, but how it came to be. It's building a kitchen of reclaimed materials, getting closer to some other passionate grower, farmer, or an individual who reclaims lumber. So I started down this path of imagining my cooking dojo, knowing that it is where I would spend the majority of my time. How do I dream up a home kitchen that only I could?”

The answer to that question came from a man named Francis. He was selling an old outhouse for 65 bucks on Craigslist and said it would make a great chicken coop. Turns out, they were speaking the same language, and when Eduardo met up with him to buy the shack, a mutual love of reclaimed materials was discovered, and a fast friendship was formed. Apart from the chicken coop to be, Eduardo also went home with a few handpicked pieces of wood from a nearby grain elevator that Francis was dismantling board by board — a solitary, meditative process that sometimes takes years. A spark was lit, and the idea for Eduardo’s kitchen stage was born.

“I committed to literally headhunting every individual piece for this place because this is where life comes in and out of,”  Eduardo beams as he waves his arms in grand gestures, adoringly, around the open space of his kitchen. Everything has a place, everything has a story. At some point when you're a chef, or a craftsman, you fall in love with your tools, the lenses or brushes you use, the hammers or chisels that you like. The same goes for cooking, and it's not just the organic material that goes in the mouth. I think there's a lot of stage presence that bringing a meal to life can have. I see Francis as one of my farmers, and instead of vegetables, he farms reclaimed, 100-year-old wood. He offers those goods to me, and I get to build that into any meal I cook for someone in my kitchen.”

Many kitchens are commonplace, too clean and industrial with cooking gadgets and utilitarian items. Not much soul. Eduardo’s kitchen, however, feels like a collage that tells the history of his life and those who come and go in it. It has a voice and a story of its own, adding context and meaning to whatever meal is being prepped, cooked, or enjoyed within its walls.

I get a quick tour of some keystone pieces; the massive vent-a-hood constructed from antique tin, drawers made from barnwood flecked with tiny particles of white that at first glance seems to be paint, but in fact is decades-old pigeon shit — details most folks would sand down or clean off. But to Eduardo, they are important details of time and place, so he lacquered over them. There is a unique piece of weathered, battered wood resembling a mountain range that forms the hearth, and another piece of “burn-pile, never-going-to-see-the-light-of-day wood” that he adhered to plywood with cement and gravel from the driveway. It serves as the entry to the pantry and looks like a mine shaft. 

“This whole door is made out of things that were tools. Things that people used and held and actually worked with every single damn day. It had a function. So the tin that sandwiched the door is a part of a complex food story. This is the wood from inside the grain chute itself. When the wheat was flowing in or out of a truck or a train car, it would run over this wood and over time it got sanded down by half an inch just from wheat hitting it,” he tells me as he admires the door. There are even pencil markings on the tin where folks from a bygone era did long-form math to figure out grain weights.

In this kitchen, all of these pieces have a chance to tell their stories again. But this is just the stage he built, and it pales in comparison to the much greater stage of the outdoors. For Eduardo, as he tells me in our final moments of food prep that morning, cooking is so much more than just making food, it’s about creating experiences and memories.

This is “the hungry life”, as Eduardo calls it, and it’s why we’re going to drive 10 hours roundtrip to go hang out with Francis for an afternoon, so that he can pay it forward to the “wood farmer” who provided all of this bounty. He wants to create a memorable food experience by showing up, breaking out the Ranger on the tailgate, and whipping up a simple but delicious meal as a way to say thank you. Of course, Eduardo also wants to dig through the stash of reclaimed wood.  

So we make our way north from Livingston and head to Malta, where Francis is about halfway through dismantling another old grain elevator. As we come to find out, it will take him almost another year to finish. During the five-hour drive, we have a much-needed opportunity to catch up on both personal and professional matters, and while I’m familiar with his pursuit of “the hungry life”, I rarely get to join in on one of the adventures. I press him to articulate the definition further, especially as it pertains to this road trip to hangout with Francis in an old building. 

“So the hungry life is exactly as it sounds; it's my hunger for life that guides my journey. It’s my interest in reclaiming parts of Americana, like a loaf of bread or a bottle of whiskey for someone thousands of miles from here that started in some field, or that single grain of wheat made its way through this elevator and slid across the timber in my kitchen to make those textures. I want that story. As we drive, we are that story, this is our hungriest life. So it's recognizing things that excite us and give us energy, and celebrating that journey. How privileged are we that we get to do this in our own free way?”

As I look out the window to see the beauty of the rolling, fragmented hills and chasms of the Missouri Breaks, I have to wholeheartedly agree. 

Pulling into town, it’s no mystery where the grain elevator is, and we find Francis quickly. They greet each other like the old friends they are, genuinely excited to see one another. I introduce myself and my dog Wyatt, who then promptly chases all of the stray cats out of the barn and eats their food. It seems we’re not the only hungry ones.

After a quick, surface-level tour of the building, Eduardo makes notes of a few choice items, then fires up the Traeger. A portable, wood pellet grill is apparently foreign to Francis, and he seems really excited about the meal, as well as our visit. In a matter of minutes, the formerly stale and dusty smell of the old building is filled with the thick, aromatic plume from the Ranger, and Eduardo sets the pork chops on there to smoke. He closes the lid, his eyes light up, and he says “Show me what you got.” Francis, a man of contagious passion, can hardly wait to show us what he has spent countless hours working on.

As he points out wood, beams, handles, signs and pulleys, he tells the history of all of it; where it came from, how they used it, when the technology improved, and how their process for building these structures and using the equipment evolved. He tells us about where stains on the wall came from, when they had fires, where they had termite problems, and how they would dupe the insurance and fire inspectors with inoperable alarm systems. Francis knows every detail about every piece in that grain elevator, partly because he’s handling every single board and nail in there, but also because he’s hungry for it. You have to be, as I don’t think most people would want to spend a year pulling boards and nails out of a questionably stable structure. Eduardo eats it up, and starts to pull some choice pieces to take home, knowing exactly where they will go in the theater stage he calls a kitchen. 

But now it’s time to eat, and it’s time for Eduardo to shine. The spectacle is nothing short of dazzling, pulling all of his homemade goodies out of the cooler. Already smoked to perfection, he sets the pork chops aside and puts the cast iron griddle on to cook potatoes, onions, carrots, and sauerkraut. Coupled with a quick sear of the pork, and the French-inspired, Montana-style choucroute is complete in a matter of minutes. Eduardo pulls out homemade pickles, fresh bread, quickly chops herbs and doles out dollops of the mustard-based sauce to round the whole thing out. We make plates, sit in the afternoon sun, and devour the simple, but incredibly delicious lunch fare. It is obvious that Francis is touched by the gesture, and his day is made. 

We all take turns telling stories and try not to fall asleep in our chairs after second helpings. It is one of the better meals I’ve had in a long time, but it is so much more than just the food, and this of course, is by Eduardo’s design. Satiated, lethargic, and loaded up with a few unique pieces of wood, we start to say our goodbyes and prepare for the five hour journey home. They are already plotting another meetup. I’m plotting a nap.

On the drive home, Eduardo tells me about his dreams for the future, for new cooking experiences, and for more ways to share his passion for life and adventure. We see eye-to-eye on all of it. As the sun starts to set, he pops up in his seat with his characteristic jubilance and points to a beautiful grain elevator in the distance with bright orange letters on the side of it. “We’ve gotta take a photo of that, it’s the perfect way to end this journey!” We pull over, admire the scene, and I shoot the last few polaroids I have left before the sun retreats behind the distant horizon — just one last bite of the Hungry Life before we both go back to our busy lives.