My Pinewood Kitchen, A Southern Culinary Cure

My Pinewood Kitchen is part memoir, part recipe book. The first section is Mee McCormick’s story, the second is her guidelines for preparing beans, grains, and sea vegetables, and the third section offers recipes.

Due to hereditary health conditions, McCormick suffered digestive and inflammation issues most of her life. After the birth of her daughters, her health got so bad, she was advised to undergo a substantial intestinal surgery, but she wasn’t sure she would make it. Instead, she went back to the basics of food and figured out what she could tolerate. From there, she joined the Culinary Institute of America to take classic cooking training and turn it into good food for people suffering from food allergies as well as digestive and autoimmune diseases like herself.

McCormick’s husband’s family had roots in the Pinewood area, a small village, about an hour outside of Nashville. When they bought property there, her husband bought the restaurant next to the ranch, and as they say, the rest is history.

I appreciated how McCormick’s story breaks the stereotype that food allergies and digestive disease are merely upper class invention and preoccupation. McCormick grew up very poor, and her own mother suffered much from many of the same conditions McCormick did, eventually passing away when McCormick was eighteen.

I appreciated McCormick’s rules about cooking beans and how they have always wanted to eat more beans, but struggled with digesting them. Her guidelines have really helped. I can’t wait to try the raspberry lemonade muffins, buckwheat pancakes, and key lime avocado pie.