May 6, 2020 • 58 mins
Kelly talks to real food advocate and owner of Pinewood Kitchen, Mee McCormick about how she saved her life with food and is now teaching others to do the same. Mee has written two books detailing how food affects our bodies and how we can heal ourselves by balancing our guts. Her restaurant is all organic, biodynamic and grown on her own farm. It's southern food done good for you and it's redefining how "healthy" food looks and tastes.
Books:
My Pinewood Kitchen: https://rstyle.me/+hrX1K4toCGwPl1FiQDfAZg
My Kitchen Cure: https://rstyle.me/+mWfGGI-t9nEeI2eEdusn0A
Follow Mee:
Facebook:@meemccormick
Instagram @meeemccormick (three E's. That's not a typo)
Follow Kelly: @velvetsedge
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Kelly Henderson and you are listening to the
Velvet's Edge podcast. My guest this week is Me McCormick.
According to her bio, me is a real food maven,
a community food advocate, a restaurantur, a rancher, a mother,
and the author of two books, My Kitchen Cure and
My Pinewood Kitchen, about healing your body with food. I
was turned onto her restaurant, Pinewood Kitchen by my clients
(00:21):
are Expentley, who's an investor in Pinewood Eats. It is
the perfect place for me because all food allergies are
accommodated for, including mine of gluten free and dairy free,
all mixed into some Southern home cooking. Not to mention
that Me is just one of the coolest women, and
I love her story and journey of fighting her own
intestinal disease that almost killed her and healing her body
(00:42):
with food. Seriously, if you can, you should buy her cookbook.
After tasting the food at Pinewood, I got it this
second I heard it was full of her recipes. I've
literally already planned out my menu for next week. Here's
our conversation. Okay, so I was telling you before this
that I've been reading your book in cookbook, um My
Pine would kitch an all week, and it's so incredibly
(01:02):
fascinating to me. Like we were talking, I totally geek out.
I'm using food to heal our bodies, and so do you.
So you essentially learned to cook in order to heal yours? Right? Yeah?
I mean I was dying. I weighed eighty pounds and
I couldn't eat food or drink water, and I became
a chef to save my life. Wouldn you couldn't even
drink water? No, I had an alteration the total circumference
(01:26):
of my small intestine, and I couldn't. It was so
when you have an ulcer like that, nothing the the
intestines are so swollen shut that nothing can go by
them without causing tons of faint. It's like a big,
gaping wound. And when it's the total circumference, it means
it can rupture at any time and kill you. So
(01:47):
were you even able to function at all? I have
no idea how I functioned as long as I did.
I mean I had two babies. Um a big life
we've led. I've led a very big life, and I
have no idea Uh, my mind is stronger than my body,
and I do believe the body follows the mind. Yeah,
well let's talk about's take it back a little bit
(02:07):
because I did. I love it. You just mentioned your
big life and I totally um related to all of
that that talk about your life at that point, But
I want to talk a little bit about your childhood first,
because you're you're like issues with food sort of started then, right, Yeah.
I mean I was born with an interception, meaning the
intestines collapsed inside of um themselves, and so the day
(02:32):
I was born, I'm someone that with the day I
was born, they were like, she's going to die. So actually,
my grandfather introduced me most of my life is the
one that almost died, and UM, I never really got
what that meant, but I think it gave me freedom.
And that's why I'm so cookie because it's like, hey,
I'm not really supposed to be here. I can do
whatever I watched. UM, but I've always known that my
(02:55):
time was borrowed. So yes, But then once I got
sick when I was older, so I had a major
surgery at birth. I was one of the first infants
to survive that surgery. My mother had Crohn's disease when
um in the eighties, and I watched her live a
very very painful life and then die when I was
a teenager. My I didn't get UM. I healed from
(03:18):
the surgery at birth, but I had a lot of
food allergies, dairy now we know celiac um and other things.
But I was born in the northern Appalachian mountains, and
um my mother was a single mother, and when she
was well, she worked as much as she could, and
when she was sick and hospitalized, we starved. And so
(03:38):
I was raised as what I say is fish sticks
and food stamps and UM. So there was no silver spoon.
There was actually an empty spoon in my mouth most
of my life, which is what probably drove you to
want a really big life later. Right, Well, then, I
think once everybody died. What people don't know about me
is that then when I was just in the verge
(04:00):
of eighteen, my mother was did not die occurrence, as
she was killed in a car accident. And then a
week later my two best friends were killed in another
car accident, and then three days later my grandmother died.
So I I was alone in the world, and I
always knew that our time was quick and fleeting, and
(04:23):
so for me, it's always been getting after having a
big life, which does not equate big stuff. It means
big living. Tell us more what you mean by that, Like,
what did you do after these deaths happened? And he
felt alone? Well, I'm half Latin so and raised very Catholic.
So the first place I went was a convent and
(04:44):
that did not work out. And um then from there,
you know, I lived with an aunt and uncle in
d C. And they were super bohemian people and they
didn't have children, and they gave me a space to
get out my feet. And then I, like most people,
I wanted to be super normal. I had all this heartbreak,
(05:05):
so all I wanted to do is mask it in
some form of normality, normality, And um, I went to
the University of Maryland, and then I moved to New
York City, and then I lived in Los Angeles, and
then I lived in Tel Aviv, in and out of
Tel Aviv for six years Israel, and then Mexico City.
And I always with someone that said, yes, I just
(05:27):
I am that person. I'm like, okay, I mean I
wanted to be Margaret Meade when I was fourteen, and
I was big into anthropology at fourteen, and then I
always thought and college, had everyone not died, what I
have finished school and gone to the Peace Corps. But
I guess my Peace Corps in my Aboriginal study is
on my farm and time. I loved reading that because
(05:52):
now we know, obviously you're in Pinewood, But I loved
reading that you were working in Hollywood as an assistant stylist,
and you've done so many different things. You were a writer.
I mean, what did you ever think your path would
end you up in Pondwood, Tennessee. No, I mean that's
the thing. I was living in Hollywood, I was. I
moved to I left New York City. The plan was
(06:13):
to go to f I T and then for the
summer a job. I left Maryland. A job opened up
for me in Los Angeles, um to be an assistant
stylist to one of the largest commercial television commercial stylists,
and so I took it, not even really knowing what
that would look like. And I loved it. I love
the story of us as humans. So I loved the
(06:33):
director sitting with us and telling us this is you know,
their middle classes is the income they make, this is
the house they live in, this is it's a goulf smith.
You know, it's this commercial And I love doing the
hunting and they're gathering and I've always been someone who
can put something together with whatever I've got, and so
I turned out to be pretty good as as only
(06:54):
an assistant stylist. But you know, for me, I'm also
again back to live in a big life. I've always
believed and still do that where I'm at is where
I have arrived. So I had arrived. I worked as
a bartender at night, and my goal was really to
be a writer. Then I became a writer for higher
writing treatments and um different pilots and when someone would
(07:17):
option the rights to books for people. So I had
a little I had a little writing gigs on the
side and bartending and assistant styling, and I mean, in truth,
I thought I had made it. Listen, I'm gonna come up.
So the fact that I had my own car and
a great apartment next to the grove, I was killing it, Okay,
that's what I mean. I was thinking that though, because
coming from where you came and then to live in
(07:39):
l A and do all these things I mean, I'm
sure that felt so glamorous. So I guess my question
is is how do you then go from that to Pontwin, Tennessee,
population two Well, I mean really insane. I mean I
met I mean I met my husband and I was like,
uh no, I mean he lived in Very's here. He
(08:00):
would laugh at me, but he lived in Pinewood on
this branch and this big cattle ranch, and you know,
I you know, he was like, I've got women crawling
for Barbara fences to get to me. And I was like,
open to gate, homie. I'm good, you know, but let
him in. You're not it. I mean when you come
from you know, back country coal mines. I mean, my
(08:20):
grandmother did the makeup. Half my family were undertakers, the
other half coal mines and steel mills, and my grandma did.
I grew up with my grandmother doing the makeup on
the bodies and so um and Barry Manilow on the
record player. I just didn't want to go back. You know,
I've viewed Pinewood is going backwards, and I viewed, like
most people, that we have to go to big places
(08:43):
to do big things. And again, uh, life has shown
me that Pinewood is the smallest place I've ever lived.
That's saying something, and it's the biggest thing I've ever done.
I love that. I love that because the mentality of
just chasing the big dreams and it has to be
in these big places and all of it, all the while,
it was right in front of you, or it was
(09:04):
back in you know, maybe the way you did grow
up or in a similar situation. Yeah. Absolutely, it's absolutely
all the things. And I think, you know, having lived
in Los Angeles and New York City and in places
like Tel Aviv in Mexico City, which is a whole
another part of the journey what we value, you know,
I think we come to these places in our lives
(09:26):
for I do, and I do it on the regular now.
And I asked myself, what what do I value? And
what is my value? And because I I've always asked
myself that, I guess that's why I ended up in Pinewood,
because it is a place where my personal value values
and value is rewarded. Mm hmm. So you finally moved
(09:47):
to Pinewood? Were you sick the like the entire time
you were in l A Because that sounds like a
pretty strenuous work schedule. I just lived on pacede. I mean,
we form relationships with our discomfort, whatever that is, emotional,
physical um relationship. We we can we work that ship out.
(10:09):
We're like we're in it on me. So I live
with I live with this chronic burn in my intestines
and in my stomach. And I lived in l A.
And I was a hundred and ten pounds at that time,
so nobody noticed. It was in the most in the
sickest way, and I just and I was, you know,
(10:30):
I wasn't starving to death, but I you know, you
only went out to dinner. You go out to dinner.
You don't even eat in l A anyway. And so
I was just basically living within this cycle of I
would eat, then I would feel bad, and then I
wouldn't eat, and then I would be starving. And then
I would have moments in the day where I didn't
have pain, and those are the days that I would
(10:51):
just kill it. I was just like doing all the things,
and you form this really bizarre relationship with digestive discomfort.
We're just common in this country with people with acid reflux, ideas, constipation,
chronic shudobes, all the things that we just go, well,
that's just my stomach, and it's not because our stomachs
(11:13):
and our digestive tracks were not created to malfunction. They
were created to function. So when you moved to Pinewood,
were you already eating in a different way or did
that come No? I mean now, well, we didn't move
full time back to Pinewood. My husband partnered actually with
Fred Siegel in Los Angeles, and we lived in Malibu.
(11:34):
I lived with people, don't know all the ways that
I lived. We lived between Malibu and Pinewood for about
thirteen years. And in between that we have a house
outside of Mexico City at the foot of the Pyramids
and Toti Wa Kan. And then we also lived full
time for a little while insight Mita on the beach.
So my husband and I are very venturous, you know,
(11:54):
the big life. For me, it was like you can
either have this gigantic house or you could have all
these adventures. So and um, so we were living you know,
the whole time. I would say for the first six
years of our marriage, we lived like that. And I
lived on water and in and out of the hospital
(12:15):
because that alteration was growing and it was causing partial
bowel obstructions and I would end up hospitalized, just definitely ill.
So we lived. I mean, then my illness and my
discomfort became a part of my husband's discomfort. So not
only now did I have the relationship with not feeling well,
he had a relationship with me not feeling well. Isn't
(12:36):
that interesting? Well? Yeah, I mean I don't see how
he couldn't be affected though, especially if you're having to
go to the hospital and it's it's crippling what you
were going through, and they couldn't figure out that it
was an alteration and they didn't know that. I, on
top of it, then had Celiac and I had two
little girls, so it was just brutal. And then how
I learned to cook is um. At this point, now
(12:57):
I'm eighty nine pounds. It's no longer even a track
of in l A. People are probably listening to this
and thinking I'm making slights on eating stories, which I'm not,
because one of the things I do own is also
UM eating disorder programs. I have said to humor about it,
so um. But then we came so I was super sick, now,
(13:19):
I mean I was just I was on the floor
in Mexico and the mouth of the jungle, and I
had had about obstruction and nobody found me for three days,
and my husband was in the United States and I
had two babies, and that's when we knew there's something wrong.
And I went back. I went back to Los Angeles.
(13:39):
I went through every test in the world. They found
the alteration, and then we said, okay, we have to
move back. And then I started apprenticing. I heard, you know,
I completely and totally on percent believe that if we listen,
we can receive information that will guide us. And I
heard a voice that said, what's in it? And I
(14:01):
had all these drugs lined up because the doctors thought
I either had small intestinal cancer or I had Crun's disease.
But I couldn't have the last biopsy to determine which
one it was because of the way the ulcer was,
it would cause my intestines to rupture and possibly kill me.
So I passed on the test and I went home
(14:21):
and I got very quiet, and I heard a voice,
and that voice is the inside voice that said what's
in it? And I applied that voice to not what's
first in the drugs that were in front of me
that I knew I couldn't even swallow because I couldn't
swallow water. Then the next thought was what's in the food?
And we were just major cattle ranchers and we weren't
(14:44):
growing produced yet, and I thought, okay, what's in the food?
And this is twelve years ago. Ten years ago, no
one was talking about what was in the food yet.
There were no books on healing your body with food.
There were no maps. So I began to apprentice with
a woman who was a Macrobiotics food counselor for digestive
health out of the Shawl Wellness Center in Spain. And
(15:07):
that's where I started to cook. And I was the
worst cook you have ever met. And you're time like
nasty girl, Like that's hard for me to believe now
because I've had your food and it's amazing. So you
were terrible. I mean, that's actually encouraging to me because
I'm like, damn, how do I learn how to cook
like this horrible? Like a can of green beans and
a jar of salsa and one fork and one pot.
(15:29):
I mean, I really did shop via the pretty pictures
on the boxes of the frozen food. I was like
those drumsticks are gorgeous. You put it in the car,
so I get it. That's and that's where I started
in macrobiotics. And I'm a sponge. I have a sponge
of a mind. I can memorize anything and everything. I mean,
(15:51):
I now speak Hebrew in Spanish because of my travels,
and um, had I had a different childhood, I probably
would have become a scientist or a doctor. But I
wasn't supposed to be that. So I then learned all
I could about macrobiotics, which is a great place to
start because it's all the whole food, so soaking your grain,
(16:12):
soaking your lagoon, your lagoons, using sea vegetables, using fermented foods,
using me so paste. That was major, and within I
would say within a month, I was starting to sit
down at the table to eat, which was huge. Within
six months, I was eating full plates of food, probably
even sooner. But there was always this voice inside of
(16:36):
me that again applies to the big life. A big
life just means a big point of view, and I
knew that there had to be a bigger point of view,
that macrobiotics could not be the only way, and there
had to be many ways to wellness, Luckily, I've been
blessed by having an adopted mother named Dr Joan Bornsinko,
(16:56):
and she has three pH d s from Harve Bird
Medical School and cellular cancer biology. And when I got
very sick, I called her and I said what do
I do? And she said, change your food now. So
I've been spoiled in receiving tons of information from her,
(17:17):
and then through another more networks of scientists that I've
connected to through her um the latest food science. So
the first studies on the microbiome weren't released until two
thousand and two, but by two thousand and seventeen there's
been ten thousand, and now to date, in the last
three years, there are thousands coming out each month. So
(17:39):
when I was doing this, there wasn't a lot of science,
but the science that did exist was coming to me,
and I was super blessed to have access to that,
and to have access to Joan, and then to Dr
Caroline Ross, who worked with Dr Andrew Wilde, and she
would come every month and she would check on me,
and I would cook, and they would both fly to
see me and eat my food and they watch me
(18:00):
get well. So I've just been super lucky so when
you say get well, what does that look like? Now?
I mean, did food completely heal your body? Are you
able to function barely? Man? Oh? Yeah? I mean now
I'm a walk in like feeling good about myself girl,
(18:20):
and and feeling good about it, you know, like I
that means I can eat and yeah I am eating.
Um I it looks like I get up every day
and I eat and I cook. So then from there,
I went to culinary school in Los Angeles because I
needed a bigger way, a bigger point of view. And
I went in as a spy. And I went in
(18:41):
as a spy for French and American classics because I
really wanted to know what it is in our food
that we crave and how do I do that? And um,
you know, traditional culinary school does not believe that you
can use Kingwa flower for to make something super classic.
So I had to kind of be a spy, which
I went to their school, so I should learn from them, right,
(19:04):
I should be quiet. And I took every bit of it,
but I was allergic to all of it. So I
would go home and recreate the recipes. And then I
wrote a book called My Kitchen Cure, which was just
because I knew I had to tell the world there
had to be a million knees out there. And that
book ended up selling like twenty thousand copies all on
my own. And then I became a chef on a
(19:26):
show called The Better Show New York. And then that
was another blessing for me because it showed me that
I wasn't alone, that there were there were millions of
me wanting to change our food. And then that led
me to Pinewood and becoming a chef there. But what
does wellness look like now? It looks like I worked
seven days a week. I am joyful. I don't suffer.
(19:49):
Every once in a while, I do because I did
find out I have celiac and so if I eat out,
I usually get sick. I don't eat out almost never, um,
which is a bummer because a lot of people interview
me and say who is your chef inspiration or where's
your favorite restaurant? And I go, yeah, you're like, so,
(20:11):
wellness looks like you know I'm here, I'm really in
the room, and I don't apologize for that. I think
healing my intestines, which is the root of our existence.
Right in Chinese medicine. It's the root of our being,
it's the basic of our wellness, and that means you.
For me, it's been a journey of discovering the self,
(20:33):
my emotional self, my spiritual self, and my well self.
So when I show up in the room, it's like
a mom and girl gets a real deal, real deal.
I love that you did so much research before. And
then i'm because when I hear that, I think, oh, well,
she's super qualified to own her own restaurant, be a chef.
(20:56):
But the way you describe it in the book is
that when your husband came to him like I bought Pinewood,
I bought this place, and you were like, no, no, no, no,
no no, Like I can't do that. There's no way.
It's that constant that or that constant critic in our head. Um.
I thought that was so interesting that that was your
first reaction. Oh I was pissed. I was like, oh,
(21:18):
hell no, you did not. Are you out of your mind?
First of all, it was do you know how much
work that is? It was second of all, in my
physically well enough? It was third, am I even capable?
Am I smart enough? I mean? Can I lead people?
And then forget the fact that it's back country, middle
of nowhere, going to become my somewhere. I mean, it's
(21:40):
not like I opened up in New York or l
A or Nashville, where there might be people, you know,
really interested in what I'm doing. It was just the
scariest one of this. I think having children and deciding
to become a mother and having fine wood are the
two of the scariest things I've ever done in my life.
Like another baby. Oh, it's the biggest baby. I mean, yeah,
(22:04):
I mean, and it's and it's it's investments, you know.
But it has changed me. It has been a huge
part of my wellness because it has put me into service.
And when we're serving other people, we're not We're in
the most generous place of abundance we can be. And
(22:24):
it's made me a really much much better human being. Yeah.
I've actually I've read a lot of that voice in
this book. It was a lot about I need to
just pause, let me listen to the universe or a
high power or whatever you want to call it, and say,
where am I supposed to be serving? Where am I
supposed to be? Like letting go of the outcome and
(22:44):
just opening yourself up to what the experience could be. Yeah,
because our expectations check us up every day. I mean,
I really try to wake up every day and lower
my expectation I do. I'm like, okay, wait, or like
if I have a project or I have a plan
and I go, this is what it's gonna look like.
I really try not to like. It's a fine balance
(23:07):
of dreaming into reality what you want to create, and
it's another dance within allowing it to unfold as it's
meant to be for you. And so it's a whole
lot of getting out of your own way. And and
when I was really sick, my grandfather going back to
my Catholic upbringing as a child. Um, and now I'm
(23:29):
just so big even in my my spiritual thinking is expanded,
like my food has um. I crawled on my knees
to the basilica with him, and Um, one of the
things you do is you bow down as low as
you can and you crawl on your knees in Mexico City,
and I crawled and my grandfather looked at me and
he said, do not ask her to heal you, meaning Guadalupe.
(23:53):
You ask her for a road to find your own wellness.
And so I really come from that that work ethic
of what is your part in this? And how are
what are you going to do? And I said, and
I prayed in that moment if if you help me
find a way to wellness, I'll serve. So I have
shown up in many places knowing it's my service. And
(24:17):
Pinewood is a massive part of my my my serving
journey majorly, and I don't know where else I'm going,
but I'll go there if the road unfolds, I suppose. Yeah,
well that is true. Um, and everything else you say
about Pinewood, it's you're creating this food, this different kind
of perspective for people with food. But so much goes
(24:38):
into that that I don't think people realize how difficult
it is to keep your restaurant clean of the gluten
or to watch all of these allergies and to keep
everything organic. It's expensive. So how do what does that
look like in comparison to other restaurants that we might
be used to. Well, first of all, we grow all
the food, and we raised the livestock. So my other
(25:01):
job is managing the farm. So I managed the farm,
and my team on the farm and we and my
husband oversees all the cattle, but I run the office
so grow you know, planting the seeds, um nurturing the seeds,
picking the bugs to keep it biodynamic, organic off of
the plants, harvesting them, and then bringing it all into
(25:24):
the restaurant means I can't waste anything. I can't waste
a carrot because that carrot actually cost me way more
than anybody else been on a carrot. And then from
there it's motivating my staff to stay invested. And so
almost everybody in Pine went in the kitchen helps out
in the fields. Every We also raise our own bees
(25:48):
and we raise our own mushrooms, so keeping them attached
to the farm helps keep the relationship with the food
as it comes into the kitchen. But I keep the
kitchen open. So it's a nineteen twenties general store and
gas station and the kitchen is in the middle of
the room. And the reason I did that is I
really wanted my team to have a relationship with the customer.
(26:12):
I wanted them to see me in the faces of them,
and I wanted every time they prepared food, I wanted
them to have that level of empathy and thoughtfulness with
each dish. And that's how you keep your kitchen managed
as you create a relationship and why behind the food
and a why behind the way you do it. And
(26:32):
it's a game changer. It's a culture that you're building.
And I did not know I was going to be right,
I was going to be leading a movement of kindness
and of thoughtfulness and inclusivity. Yeah you say that. You
feel like the energy of kindness goes into your cooking
like another ingredient. Like if I'm crabby, I'm going to
(26:53):
make the nastiest food. Really, you notice it's my food
is a little edgy. Oh yeah, it's kind of there's
some shitty soup. But I yeah, for sure. You know,
like my energy or if I'm rushing, I'm not focused,
it's not going to be as good. But if I'm
joyful and I'm relaxed, then it is going to be
(27:14):
so good you can stand it. And that's what is
in there. And I feel like I set that energy
and that little kitchen. I walk in the door, and
no matter what's going on with me, the second I
walk in the door, the first place I go is
behind the line and check in with my team. Then
I move out to the floor. So yeah, I mean
that's the deliciousness and food is love. I love too
(27:37):
that you said one of the fears you had about
actually being the chef was that you had experienced other
chefs or cooks or anyone that worked in a kitchen
at a restaurant as kind of aggressive and hard, and
you were like, that's not me, Like, I could never
lead that way. So it's you don't want Yeah, it's
like you're eating Usually when you go out to eat
in a restaurant, you're eating in a highly SHOs food.
(28:01):
There is a ticket there. First of all, from the
moment that food is ordered, it's ordered at how much
is this going to cost? Can we get it cheaper?
Where do we get it from? And then the next
place that it goes to, it goes into the kitchen.
There's a race to get it prepped that I understand well,
and then there is a race to get the ticket
time out to the table and then there so that
(28:23):
creates this anxious consciousness that's going on in the kitchen.
So you have chefs that are hierarchy. There's a hierarchy,
there's aggressive behavior, people are running under pressure, and there's
a lack of joy when you're doing that. So how
do you do that and remove that level of pressure.
(28:44):
I mean, we still have the pressure in Pinewood because
we get rocket in there. But I always make sure
that my team knows slow it down, take your time,
finish it right, relax, get off the line. Don't you
know no one is talking to each other, um in
a negative way. I mean, that's a that's a huge
piece for me. I don't have any bullies in my kitchen,
(29:07):
and I won't and I've had fantastic chefs come through
the door to work with me, probably way better than me. Um,
but they were assholes and I was like, homie, you
can't be here. It's like and if it's we have
a saying now in the kitchen, if you can't grow,
you gotta go. I love that. If you can't grow,
you gotta go. Well, I do think you're inspiring a
(29:27):
movement so much so. You guys have now opened up
Pondwood Mercantile, which you sell a lot of the jams,
the pickles. What else do you guys sell in there?
We sell the soups. So I make all these microbiome
soups because my whole thing is based in the biome
and how the biome changes everything, so which bacterias feed
and create which short chain fatty acids that then fight inflammation.
(29:49):
So if you're eating for those bacterias, you're building that
colony of gut homies I call them, then your body
is imbalanced. So I make these microbiome soups and everything
I do in the restaurant, you know, I really try
to do super Southern, but then I just mess with
the ingredients or I combine. I create a platter like
my the Southerner, which is yes, it's fried chicken, it's
(30:12):
gluten free and rice brand oil, but I make sure
there's colored greens with apple cider vinegar. And then the
collars feed a certain gut homie, and then the slaw
is made with carrots and what the carrot does in
the gut. So I'm looking at Southern recipes and I'm
playing with them so they support everyone's gut wellness and
the and the mercantile now sells everything. We do. An
(30:32):
elderberry barbecue sauce. We do an catch up, so the
uma bo she catchup is a Japanese vinegar that does
not feed yeast and candida and it also fights acid
indigestion and it works as a digestive enzyme. Oh my gosh.
I'm like it's so good. Right, So it's catchup and
people are like that's the best catch up for ever.
(30:54):
And I'm like, I'm like, dip it again, girl, dip
it again. Well, did you ever have any resist sense?
Because the Pinewood is a tiny town, and I mean,
I think that part of this movement to now is
that you have this whole investment group. You guys call
yourself Pinewood Eats, and you're you're wanting to continue to
inspire others to connect to real food. But like, did
people in Pinewood really get what that was all about
(31:17):
at first? Oh no, it was really brutal. Yeah, I didn't.
What I did write about in the book was that
was the pushback and was the resistance, and was um, hey,
you know I had taken this restaurant, this store that
it suggested general store and then that had been there
since the nineteen twenties and it had been, um it's
(31:37):
always been, you know, a fixture in the community, and
I changed it and I changed the food, and uh, yes,
I've built up the community because now I employ everybody
out there, and the more burghers we sell, the more cowboys,
the more potatoes we sell, the more people on the farm,
the more canned goods I sell, the more people work
in my cannon kitchen that I run. So I was
(32:00):
raising them up. But in the middle, before I could
raise them up at all that people could see was
the change I was bringing in. It was frightening, and
so there was a lot of resistance and there was
a lot of hate. And I learned a great lesson.
You know, if you want someone to have grace, you
have to be the grace. And so I just have
had to really again always take things back to myself
(32:24):
and um, how can I how can I make the
situation better by being better instead of being mad at them?
How can I be better? I asked my kids that
now when things go down without my go girl, what
was your partner? Because we have a partner. We have
a partner everything. And you know, we feed everybody in
pine Wood, whether they have money to pay or not.
(32:46):
There's a huge sign and we feed everyone because being
a hungry kid, I can't imagine growing all the food
that we grow there and serving the type of food
that we we serve which doesn't even exist in Nashville
because it's really right there from the farm. Uh, and
it's food allergy friendly. I can't imagine having access to
(33:08):
so much food and not being generous with it. So
we feed everybody, I mean, and I think now people
are proud of us, they're they're very proud. And now
we brought in these swanky partners. So yes, why which
is Dirk Spentley. He was a client of mine and
I know he has spoken so wonderfully about Palmond for
(33:29):
years now. But like, um, I think that it's funny
because Dirks like Dirks and I will go on these
not fad diets, but we were always kind of looking
into what to do for our bodies and all that stuff,
so we accept like organic food can be amazing, you know.
But that was kind of the thing that I just
did not understand if a pine Wood small town culture
(33:49):
would think that way, because we're you know, I feel
like a lot of people who have lived a certain
way for a certain amount of time, they're just kind
of setting their ways and don't want to really look
outside of the box on that stuff. Yeah, I think
what has happened there One of the big things is
I never when we opened, I should have been wondering
who would come, but instead I was just trying to
stay alive physically with keeping up with the pace of it.
(34:13):
But what has happened is Pinewood because it's such an
approachable blaze, because it's so comfortable in there that people
now drive for hours to eat there because they know.
We all know. We used to think it was only
on the coast or in the big cities that people
wanted to eat well. But what I know now more
than anybody else because of what I do in Pinewood,
(34:35):
is people everywhere want to feel well, they want to
eat better, and they want to make changes, but there
are very few places for them to go to experience
different approaches to cooking and food that are familiar. So
I have the burger in the handcut fries, and I
have the fried chicken. But then I'll have one of
the microbiome soups, or I'll have um, you know, something
(34:56):
from the farm that they maybe won't try anywhere else,
but it's a comfortable enough setting that they're like, oh,
I want to let me chase that, let me get
a bite of that. Yeah, And they're more open. Well,
I want to talk a little bit. We were talking
before about just how I think the science behind all
of this is so fascinating. Um and I know for
a lot of people, because it felt this way to
me when I first started learning about how food can
(35:18):
heal your body. It just feels overwhelming because there's so
much to learn. There's so much that I feel like
we've been misled to believe, as far as um, you know,
diets or what's actually good for our bodies. So can
you give some of the basics. Let's talk about maybe
the basics of like gut health and why that's so important. Yeah.
I think the first thing that happened to us is
(35:40):
we were we started to use the word healthy food,
and we view healthy food as punishment for when we've
gone off the rails. So we'll look at food like
a kale salad, and you know, actually, I think kale
can be delicious, but I think it needs to be
cooked or it needs to be finally finely chopped and
then massage to make a great salad. So and there's
(36:00):
a whole process to that. So we really view things
like healthy food or good for us food as punishment
that we've done something wrong, so we first. The first
layer for me about food and healing our body with
food is our own judgments and paying attention to what
are we eating and mindfulness. So I always say to people, first,
I want you to pay attention to what you're eating.
(36:21):
Just spend the week and you know, did you eat
a lot of dry crunchy? Do you eat a lot
of cheese? Do you have a lot of milk? Do
you have a lot of meat? Do you have a
lot of kale? Because you can create an excess and
imbalance in the gut with too much certain vegetables. So basically,
gut health is made up. We have all of these
bacteria's good, bad, and some are good in some people
(36:43):
and bad in other people. And what I love is
in the beginning of my journey when I said macrobiotics
was too rigid or too narrow for me, is I
am not a fundamentalist. I believe we are all individuals
and we all have to find our own yellow brick
road to health via food and the microbiome. Right now
is proof in that, and it has me super duper
(37:05):
excited because we some people can be vegans and they
do really well and they can be keto and they
do well, or they could be paleo, but somebody else doesn't.
And now we understand why because in the gut we
have all this different bacteria and the purpose of the
bacteria is to break down the food so that the
food can then go to work in the body, the
(37:26):
nutritional value in the food can work in the body.
Most of us have an imbalance at dysbiosis of bacteria
in the gut, in the intestines, at some place in
the intestines, some in the small intestines, some'm at the
top of the small intestine, some in the colon, the
bottom of the colon. It just depends. So eating for
the bacteria the gut homies because they're like the rider
(37:49):
dies and we don't want them to die. We want
them to multiply like babies kids. Do you remember that cars?
Oh my god. So we want them to multiply like
babies kids. And so how they do that is by
being fed plant foods. So one of the things about
veganism and why veganism works. And I'm not a vegan,
I'm a cattle rancher. I'm an open minded eater, and
(38:12):
I'm not not that vegans are an open minded They
are wonderful. And I was vegan for seven years and
I do eat predominantly plant based. But one of the
reasons that that works so well and it does work,
is because you're feeding the gut all these variety of
different plants, and each bacteria eats a different plant. So,
for example, Acromagia which is located in the new coastal
(38:35):
lining of the small intestine, and it works um as
it's a major anti inflammatory bacteria, and it's a very
small colony. It loves pomegranate and it loves whole cranberry,
but how many pome And if you have weak digestion,
you're not gonna eat pomegranate seeds because that's going to
irritate the lining. So whole cranberries are frozen in a
(38:58):
smoothie excellent. So knowing the bacteria and knowing the balance
of what that bacteria eats and what is your bacteria
load is key. So there is a test called biome
that I'm a super fan of, and I don't work
with them because I was literally about to say, well
how do we find out these bacterias? So V I O. M. E.
(39:19):
By and it's a company, and I love this company
because I've been using their test myself every ninety days.
It's key to staying well for me. I've watched a
lot of people that I go, girl, you need to
get the biome tests, and then they email it to me.
But they can they don't. So what happens is in
the biome tests, they check all the bacteria that they
(39:39):
can and you get a breakdown, a very simple breakdown,
and the breakdown says, you know, these are the foods
you need to eat. These are your super foods because
you need to eat these to fuel this particular bacteria.
One of the most common superfoods for everybody is um arugula. Usually,
unless you have an abundance of arugula, then you may
(40:00):
have to cut it back. Um. So then those are
the foods you the super foods you want to feed,
those the super dupa gut homies. And then there are
the foods that you want to have in that are
good for you. And you get that list that you
want to start adding in. And then you get the
minimized food list, which is all individual again, right, because
whatever your excess is might be someone's um. They don't
(40:25):
have it they have the you know what I mean.
So it's so you're gonna get a list of what
you need to minimize. So say you've been eating a
lot of broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage and Brussels sprouts
because you read that's good for you, or kale, and
so you go on a kale kick and all you
eat is kale or kale like given it to shadows.
(40:45):
Don't be mad at me, but or just whatever, or
you're just like an onion a holic, which I am.
These feed different bacterias and you have you can create
an excess of those bacterias. So it'll say minimize this,
and then you're gonna have the avoid And that's because
the bacteria that feeds off of that particular food is
(41:05):
already out of control and it could be causing problems
for you. So that's why I love the biome test
because it's the individual yellow brick road to wellness. It's like,
this is to me, the future of individualized medicine, and
this is the end of fat diets, which makes me
really happy because listen, you're got your microbiome changes with
(41:29):
every meal, and in ninety days you can completely reset
your gut. So if it changes with every meal, how
do you consistently keep your gut imbalance. I'm really mindful
of what I eat, so like I was just thinking today,
what like I look in like I'm a craver and
I get kicked, Like like I get on these things
(41:51):
like snap peas right now, that's like my jam. I'm
like in the fridge, i have a bag of snappieas
and I'm like snacking on them. And then I'll go, okay,
lay off the snap these. Or I've put onion in
everything for two weeks straight, cut that onion back. Or
It's really not about what to cut out of your
diet as much as it is about what to add in.
Because diet is about loss, right, so if we and
(42:14):
then that's always sad to us because it's it's lost.
So instead of thinking about what I shouldn't eat, I
always think about what I haven't been eating. And that
goes back to raising cattle the way we do, which
is grass fed, grass finished, mob grazing, and in mob
grazing you always win. There is a situation with any
livestock you always have to look at what have they
(42:34):
been eating, what is their nutritional profile. Right. So each
pasture on the farm, we move our cattle right now,
which is the beginning of the high season, three times
a day, and we move them to each pasture where
you might look at it and think, oh, it's just
the same grass, but it's not the same grass. It
has a different amount of water, a different amount of sunshine,
(42:54):
it has a different um periods of the day where
it gets more sunshine than another pasture, and it's a
different straight it's a different type of grass that we're
growing in each pasture. And this is how you create
um wellness and balance and organic livestock. Well. I when
when I got sick, this all went to my own mind.
I was like, well, wait a minute, I need to
(43:15):
be grazing better. I need to graze from a big,
old variety of foods and that's how you stay well. Right.
So that's what's so interesting about even the mentality of
a diet or I was just thinking when you were talking,
like everyone you know with the gut health of the
big conversation is usually oh, we'll just get on a probiotic,
but like, how would one probiotic actually work for multiple
(43:36):
types of people because we're all so different internally it.
First of all, it doesn't anymore, and they know that.
And and now I mean, I'm not against probiotics at all,
Like I say, take it, do you? But for me,
I did not. I did not ever take probiotics. I
healed that alceration with um fermented foods and eating a
variety of foods to feed it. So you've got probiotic
(43:57):
foods and the probiotic and the gut bacteria. That's the
good homie is the probiotic, and then it lives off
of this variety of probiotic food So the other thing
that people do is they'll go ahead and they'll take
a probiotic, but they're not they're not feeding even those bacterias.
So you have to live a really big point of view.
(44:18):
You've got to have a big life outlook at what
you're eating. Yeah, let's talk a little bit too about
gut issues and emotional health, because you talk a lot
about this in your book, and I thought that was
so fascinating how the two are actually linked. Can you
kind of explain that? Yeah, So, um, gut health. First
of all, seratonin is created in the gut um your
(44:41):
vegas nerve, which is the main nerve that connects the
gut in the brain. UM bacteria travels through that nerve
um the whole the whole way. That we're looking at depression,
even schizophrenia right now, and the scientists are studying this
big time UM mood disorders, U all of the things
(45:01):
that were in anxiety. I mean, anxiety is huge. And
I can tell before I knew this level of science
and had really dove into that, I could tell you
that when I my inflammation and my testines comes back,
which it is a dance you said earlier, how do
I live? I take care of myself, Like when I've
been working. I just finished a two week work grind
(45:24):
and these three days today's Wednesday, right, I'm just kind
of struggling because I get this extreme fatigue in my
body because I have Hashimoto's room a toward arthritis UM
technically crowns disease, celiac and psoriasis. So I live this
dance of like did I sleep? Did I drink too
much wine? Did I um? Like? What? How did I
(45:46):
throw myself off? Am I just plain exhausted? So I
can tell when my gut goes down and I don't
feel well or I feel a stomach ache or I
feel sort of bloated, my mind goes down, and if
I get glutened, I'm like an emotional wreck. Two days
after I feel that too. Yes, I just it's just
(46:07):
the way that it works for me, you know. I mean,
if I don't feel well, my mind isn't well. So
the whole gut brain science, uh, and the connection this
is just the beginning. I mean, we are really going
into unchartered territories that again are liberating, you know, because
there are all kinds of really fantastic studies that are
(46:29):
now studying depression and people with manic depression and bipolar
and they're studying their gut microbiomes and their bacterias, and
they're finding that a lot of people, the majority and
these studies, have um imbalances in their microbiome, and they
have high levels of particular bacteria in common. And when
(46:51):
they bring that bacteria back into balance, their emotional wellness
comes into balance. There was a wonderful study UM done
that showed the families that have inherited depression genetically, you know,
inherited depression, and they're finding that maybe what's inherited is
the microbiome and which is again why I get so excited,
(47:17):
is any It's liberating because you're right now we're living
in a time where it's what can we do for
ourselves is finally on the table, Like how do I
become a better person emotionally and physically? And what is
my part in in in this? How do I do it? How?
And now there's all kinds of science to back up
(47:37):
the house. Yeah, I'm just glad the conversation is moving
so rapidly because it's it's frustrated me for years that
we don't I haven't felt like our society connects how
sick we are with what we're putting in our bodies
and what we're putting in our food and all of
these things that we do on the daily we just
don't even think about. You know. It's just like this
(47:57):
thing that we do and we're not conscious of all
that actually affects the way that our system works. Yeah.
I mean, and we've only been eating from a from
like a glutton nous sort of pleasure place for a
very short period of time and history, the majority of
people on this planet didn't have access to food the
way that we do. In the last fifty years, so
(48:20):
food is changing, but it's empowering to me, you know,
I like, I have two girls, and my daughters have
watched me find my way back to wellness and remain
in wellness. You know, once you get well, you've got
to stay there. And so they watched the dance, and
I just know that, you know, God forbid if anything
(48:41):
happens to me like happened to my mother, I've I've
they've they've witnessed a great mirror and how to take
care of themselves. What would be I mean, because you
break down all of this in the book. The book
is called My Pinewood Kitchen. If you guys are interested
in finding out more details about the bacteria's we're talking
about in the different ways the different foods that can
(49:03):
heal and balance your system. But if there is there
one thing that you could say that people could do
or they can make a change, or are or our
body is just too diverse to put it in one No, yeah,
I mean we you can easily make a change. You
can start to get to know your body. I think
first one, pay attention what are you eating like? Without judgment,
(49:25):
because we're so judged, we're so judging of ourselves in
our food. We're so critical of what we're eating and
what we're feeding ourselves when we're feeding our kids, and
what did we have yesterday? So one, what did you eat?
What is your excess? Then identify it. Then start paying
attention to how you feel after you eat certain things.
Your body is there to talk to you. It's a
(49:48):
living being, you know, you know, we're just inside of
this living being. So and then the next thing is,
you know, um, pay attention to the main things that
that you're eating and how you feel. So a lot
of people and a lot of chefs and a lettle
restaurateurs go, oh, these people are on this gluten kick
and they're getting off of it and it's a fat
(50:08):
And my thing is, no, people just want to feel better.
So if they're starting with gluten, great, I'm Celiac. But
if you want to come into my restaurant and you
want to order gluten free, power to you, because I'm
trying to support you to figure out why you don't
feel bad. You know, Do I think gluten free is
for everybody? Absolutely not. Do I think dairy free is
for everybody? No? I think you get to figure it out.
(50:31):
And if you can digest. You know that you can.
But the best thing that you can do is you
can add more plants to your diet and if you
have weak digestion, cook them. I don't necessarily think that
eating raw vegetables all day is good for anyone. I
think that warm cooked foods are great. I think that
smoothies are a great place to start. Um, if you
(50:54):
want to bring your kids on board, But I don't
even think about kids. I think about you. I think
about just do you and start to form a relationship
with what you're eating and mindful with it. And the
more plants you can fold into your gut, literally, the
better the gut is going to be. And then you
know your sugar I mean, because sugar wears us out,
(51:16):
and it's just again, it goes back to the first
place to start is mindful. And then once you get
that mindfulness, I almost feel like all these opportunities for
you to discover a path to your own wellness are
going to open up for you. Yeah. I love that.
I'm gonna link the description, Um, I'm sorry, I'm gonna
link the book my Pinewood Kitchen and the description of
(51:37):
this podcast. I can't wait to start cooking the recipes.
We had a tomato soup frenzy at this house the
other night, like everyone was fighting over the last bowl.
It's so good. And I saw that it's a recipe
in the books. I'm so excited. Oh good, you had
the tomato soup. And what else did you eat? I
don't even remember what we had. We had wings, we
had fried chicken, we had um, what do we have?
(52:00):
Some cold slaw? Baked beans? I mean it was so good,
potato salad, a full southern now, it was amazing. Oh
that makes me so happy. Hey, what are you guys?
So you guys delivered on a Friday. So what with
this coronavirus stuff happening? What does that look like for
your Pinewood business? We are so blessed. I thought when
(52:22):
the coronavirus hit that I was going to have to
close because I rely on people coming an hour each way. Um,
and I thought, okay, we have to close, and we
closed for a weekend, and then I thought, okay, we
can stay open. So I'm partners with one of my
other partners in Pinewood, Ryan Chapman, were also partners in
(52:42):
another business called Integrative Life Center on music Grow and
that's an eating disorder, depression and UM chemical dependency program.
That's a whole person program. And so I do the
food service for I l C. And that really saved us.
And then the next thing that happened is we run
I run a cannon kitchen, and my goal was just
(53:05):
to not let the twenty people that work for us
on the farm and in the restaurant be out of work.
I mean, I just was like, how do I keep
these people employed? And so between running a full time
canning business and then UM the Integrative Life Center, and
then we opened up for pickup and take out and
now we deliver in Nashville Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Franklin, Brentwood, Fairview,
(53:28):
all over the city. And now it's changing again that
we're doing these farm boxes and these patiful boxes of
produce and beef and pork and eggs and cake and
chicken and biscuits and jam. And so what's happening is
Pinewood is really finding its way into Nashville and the
(53:50):
greater Nashville area. And I haven't had to lay one
person off. In fact, my kitchen is now running seven
days a week, and I'm desperately in need to find
more cooks and more collide. That's amazing, especially right, I mean,
it's everything, and I think it's that. I just you know,
I love. The energy that you put out is the
(54:11):
energy you get back? Yeah, I agree. Where can people
you talked about the Pinewood boxes, Where could they find
that kind of stuff? They can go to Pinewood Kitchen
and Mercantile dot com and it says pick up, pick up.
There's a little button right in the center and you
click on that and that takes you to our online program.
And as you scroll through, you'll see the food that
(54:31):
can be delivered to you. And as you scroll down,
it says from the mercantile and everything that I'm growing
can go into that box. Zucchini, tomatoes, Um, I'm waiting.
We haven't robbed our hives yet, but soon we'll rob
our hives and I'll have honey. Um. All the things
that we do in Pinewood because we're a full functioning farm, mushrooms,
(54:52):
produce beef, pork, everything can go in the box. And
now we're baking our own bread and so we're adding
it all. L yeam, I tell you guys, Like seriously,
it was one of the best meals I've had a
long time. Plus we got a box that's kind of
the full experience. It's just fun right now to spice
things up. I know, I'm getting tired of like having
to figure out what to cooks. It was super nice
(55:13):
to just have all these new ideas come right to
our doorstep. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, So we're rolling. I mean,
we're just we're we've stayed super insulated. The other thing
that we've done in Pinewood is my team is small,
and so to keep them out of grocery stores, we
feed them. So no one is if you're working with
(55:34):
us in Pinewood, you're not shopping in grocery stores. You're
eating from the restaurant and the farm, and it's you know,
it's community. I think Pinewood is that is what things
used to be, and I hope it's what we go
back to where um, what that store probably was in
the nineteen twenties. It was the hub where you got everything,
and everyone is living off of that store and there's
(55:56):
a connectedness to that. And now we've opened up our
outdoor seating with umbrellas and social distance tables, and my
whole team wears gloves and masks because, um, I am
high risk and so are a couple other people that
work with me. So we're just moving in this new
world together. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to come visit
when it it opens back up in person. Um, where
(56:18):
can people find you in the meantime other than the website?
Do you have social media sites? Oh? Yes, I social media?
Like three pages on Facebook, I'm all over that place.
I've got me McCormick, and then on Instagram three es
M E E. McCormick and then find with Kitchen and
(56:39):
workantile on Instagram, and then just me McCormick on Facebook,
and then fine with Kitchen and Workantile on Facebook, and
then me Tracy McCormick on Facebook. I feel like I'm
just like that you just took over Facebook. You know
what It's so interesting about Facebook? Don't sleep on it.
I built a really big platform over there the last
few years and everybody kind of le Facebook. But can
(57:01):
I tell you Facebook is coming back? Oh my gosh,
it's huge because everyone is on there so all of this.
I mean, I've always said don't sleep on Facebook because
the audience there is a different, maybe different type of
Audience and Instagram, but they're super active right now and
I like that because I like that people have a
(57:22):
place to connect. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get back
on the Facebook game. I've kind of slacked, girl, don't
slack well me. I thank you so much for doing this.
It's so nice to finally talk to you. We have
so many connections, so it's so great that I can
actually connect with you. I'm really excited this. I love
talking to you too, and I love being able to
share the goodness of pine Wish. Yes, you, guys, check
(57:43):
out my Pinewood kitchen. It's sold everywhere online right now,
and get a Pinewood box. Do it. I highly recommend it.
Thanks me for being here, and thank you guys for listening.
This is Kelly Henderson and you've been listening to the
Velvet Edge podcast. I truly believe that every one of
us has a little velvet and a little edge, so
it's so important to remember that to be strong, you
(58:05):
must be solved too. Thank you so much for sharing
in those stories with me. You can follow Velvet's Edge
on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as Velvet's Edge
dot com if you have it yet. Go to Apple
Podcast and subscribe, Rate and review this podcast. Join me
every Wednesday for more conversations on lifestyle, beauty, and relationships.
(58:26):
Thanks for listening.
This is Kelly Henderson and you are listening to the
Velvet's Edge podcast. My guest this week is Me McCormick.
According to her bio, me is a real food maven,
a community food advocate, a restaurantur, a rancher, a mother,
and the author of two books, My Kitchen Cure and
My Pinewood Kitchen, about healing your body with food. I
was turned onto her restaurant, Pinewood Kitchen by my clients
(00:21):
are Expentley, who's an investor in Pinewood Eats. It is
the perfect place for me because all food allergies are
accommodated for, including mine of gluten free and dairy free,
all mixed into some Southern home cooking. Not to mention
that Me is just one of the coolest women, and
I love her story and journey of fighting her own
intestinal disease that almost killed her and healing her body
(00:42):
with food. Seriously, if you can, you should buy her cookbook.
After tasting the food at Pinewood, I got it this
second I heard it was full of her recipes. I've
literally already planned out my menu for next week. Here's
our conversation. Okay, so I was telling you before this
that I've been reading your book in cookbook, um My
Pine would kitch an all week, and it's so incredibly
(01:02):
fascinating to me. Like we were talking, I totally geek out.
I'm using food to heal our bodies, and so do you.
So you essentially learned to cook in order to heal yours? Right? Yeah?
I mean I was dying. I weighed eighty pounds and
I couldn't eat food or drink water, and I became
a chef to save my life. Wouldn you couldn't even
drink water? No, I had an alteration the total circumference
(01:26):
of my small intestine, and I couldn't. It was so
when you have an ulcer like that, nothing the the
intestines are so swollen shut that nothing can go by
them without causing tons of faint. It's like a big,
gaping wound. And when it's the total circumference, it means
it can rupture at any time and kill you. So
(01:47):
were you even able to function at all? I have
no idea how I functioned as long as I did.
I mean I had two babies. Um a big life
we've led. I've led a very big life, and I
have no idea Uh, my mind is stronger than my body,
and I do believe the body follows the mind. Yeah,
well let's talk about's take it back a little bit
(02:07):
because I did. I love it. You just mentioned your
big life and I totally um related to all of
that that talk about your life at that point, But
I want to talk a little bit about your childhood first,
because you're you're like issues with food sort of started then, right, Yeah.
I mean I was born with an interception, meaning the
intestines collapsed inside of um themselves, and so the day
(02:32):
I was born, I'm someone that with the day I
was born, they were like, she's going to die. So actually,
my grandfather introduced me most of my life is the
one that almost died, and UM, I never really got
what that meant, but I think it gave me freedom.
And that's why I'm so cookie because it's like, hey,
I'm not really supposed to be here. I can do
whatever I watched. UM, but I've always known that my
(02:55):
time was borrowed. So yes, But then once I got
sick when I was older, so I had a major
surgery at birth. I was one of the first infants
to survive that surgery. My mother had Crohn's disease when
um in the eighties, and I watched her live a
very very painful life and then die when I was
a teenager. My I didn't get UM. I healed from
(03:18):
the surgery at birth, but I had a lot of
food allergies, dairy now we know celiac um and other things.
But I was born in the northern Appalachian mountains, and
um my mother was a single mother, and when she
was well, she worked as much as she could, and
when she was sick and hospitalized, we starved. And so
(03:38):
I was raised as what I say is fish sticks
and food stamps and UM. So there was no silver spoon.
There was actually an empty spoon in my mouth most
of my life, which is what probably drove you to
want a really big life later. Right, Well, then, I
think once everybody died. What people don't know about me
is that then when I was just in the verge
(04:00):
of eighteen, my mother was did not die occurrence, as
she was killed in a car accident. And then a
week later my two best friends were killed in another
car accident, and then three days later my grandmother died.
So I I was alone in the world, and I
always knew that our time was quick and fleeting, and
(04:23):
so for me, it's always been getting after having a
big life, which does not equate big stuff. It means
big living. Tell us more what you mean by that, Like,
what did you do after these deaths happened? And he
felt alone? Well, I'm half Latin so and raised very Catholic.
So the first place I went was a convent and
(04:44):
that did not work out. And um then from there,
you know, I lived with an aunt and uncle in
d C. And they were super bohemian people and they
didn't have children, and they gave me a space to
get out my feet. And then I, like most people,
I wanted to be super normal. I had all this heartbreak,
(05:05):
so all I wanted to do is mask it in
some form of normality, normality, And um, I went to
the University of Maryland, and then I moved to New
York City, and then I lived in Los Angeles, and
then I lived in Tel Aviv, in and out of
Tel Aviv for six years Israel, and then Mexico City.
And I always with someone that said, yes, I just
(05:27):
I am that person. I'm like, okay, I mean I
wanted to be Margaret Meade when I was fourteen, and
I was big into anthropology at fourteen, and then I
always thought and college, had everyone not died, what I
have finished school and gone to the Peace Corps. But
I guess my Peace Corps in my Aboriginal study is
on my farm and time. I loved reading that because
(05:52):
now we know, obviously you're in Pinewood, But I loved
reading that you were working in Hollywood as an assistant stylist,
and you've done so many different things. You were a writer.
I mean, what did you ever think your path would
end you up in Pondwood, Tennessee. No, I mean that's
the thing. I was living in Hollywood, I was. I
moved to I left New York City. The plan was
(06:13):
to go to f I T and then for the
summer a job. I left Maryland. A job opened up
for me in Los Angeles, um to be an assistant
stylist to one of the largest commercial television commercial stylists,
and so I took it, not even really knowing what
that would look like. And I loved it. I love
the story of us as humans. So I loved the
(06:33):
director sitting with us and telling us this is you know,
their middle classes is the income they make, this is
the house they live in, this is it's a goulf smith.
You know, it's this commercial And I love doing the
hunting and they're gathering and I've always been someone who
can put something together with whatever I've got, and so
I turned out to be pretty good as as only
(06:54):
an assistant stylist. But you know, for me, I'm also
again back to live in a big life. I've always
believed and still do that where I'm at is where
I have arrived. So I had arrived. I worked as
a bartender at night, and my goal was really to
be a writer. Then I became a writer for higher
writing treatments and um different pilots and when someone would
(07:17):
option the rights to books for people. So I had
a little I had a little writing gigs on the
side and bartending and assistant styling, and I mean, in truth,
I thought I had made it. Listen, I'm gonna come up.
So the fact that I had my own car and
a great apartment next to the grove, I was killing it, Okay,
that's what I mean. I was thinking that though, because
coming from where you came and then to live in
(07:39):
l A and do all these things I mean, I'm
sure that felt so glamorous. So I guess my question
is is how do you then go from that to Pontwin, Tennessee,
population two Well, I mean really insane. I mean I
met I mean I met my husband and I was like,
uh no, I mean he lived in Very's here. He
(08:00):
would laugh at me, but he lived in Pinewood on
this branch and this big cattle ranch, and you know,
I you know, he was like, I've got women crawling
for Barbara fences to get to me. And I was like,
open to gate, homie. I'm good, you know, but let
him in. You're not it. I mean when you come
from you know, back country coal mines. I mean, my
(08:20):
grandmother did the makeup. Half my family were undertakers, the
other half coal mines and steel mills, and my grandma did.
I grew up with my grandmother doing the makeup on
the bodies and so um and Barry Manilow on the
record player. I just didn't want to go back. You know,
I've viewed Pinewood is going backwards, and I viewed, like
most people, that we have to go to big places
(08:43):
to do big things. And again, uh, life has shown
me that Pinewood is the smallest place I've ever lived.
That's saying something, and it's the biggest thing I've ever done.
I love that. I love that because the mentality of
just chasing the big dreams and it has to be
in these big places and all of it, all the while,
it was right in front of you, or it was
(09:04):
back in you know, maybe the way you did grow
up or in a similar situation. Yeah. Absolutely, it's absolutely
all the things. And I think, you know, having lived
in Los Angeles and New York City and in places
like Tel Aviv in Mexico City, which is a whole
another part of the journey what we value, you know,
I think we come to these places in our lives
(09:26):
for I do, and I do it on the regular now.
And I asked myself, what what do I value? And
what is my value? And because I I've always asked
myself that, I guess that's why I ended up in Pinewood,
because it is a place where my personal value values
and value is rewarded. Mm hmm. So you finally moved
(09:47):
to Pinewood? Were you sick the like the entire time
you were in l A Because that sounds like a
pretty strenuous work schedule. I just lived on pacede. I mean,
we form relationships with our discomfort, whatever that is, emotional,
physical um relationship. We we can we work that ship out.
(10:09):
We're like we're in it on me. So I live
with I live with this chronic burn in my intestines
and in my stomach. And I lived in l A.
And I was a hundred and ten pounds at that time,
so nobody noticed. It was in the most in the
sickest way, and I just and I was, you know,
(10:30):
I wasn't starving to death, but I you know, you
only went out to dinner. You go out to dinner.
You don't even eat in l A anyway. And so
I was just basically living within this cycle of I
would eat, then I would feel bad, and then I
wouldn't eat, and then I would be starving. And then
I would have moments in the day where I didn't
have pain, and those are the days that I would
(10:51):
just kill it. I was just like doing all the things,
and you form this really bizarre relationship with digestive discomfort.
We're just common in this country with people with acid reflux, ideas, constipation,
chronic shudobes, all the things that we just go, well,
that's just my stomach, and it's not because our stomachs
(11:13):
and our digestive tracks were not created to malfunction. They
were created to function. So when you moved to Pinewood,
were you already eating in a different way or did
that come No? I mean now, well, we didn't move
full time back to Pinewood. My husband partnered actually with
Fred Siegel in Los Angeles, and we lived in Malibu.
(11:34):
I lived with people, don't know all the ways that
I lived. We lived between Malibu and Pinewood for about
thirteen years. And in between that we have a house
outside of Mexico City at the foot of the Pyramids
and Toti Wa Kan. And then we also lived full
time for a little while insight Mita on the beach.
So my husband and I are very venturous, you know,
(11:54):
the big life. For me, it was like you can
either have this gigantic house or you could have all
these adventures. So and um, so we were living you know,
the whole time. I would say for the first six
years of our marriage, we lived like that. And I
lived on water and in and out of the hospital
(12:15):
because that alteration was growing and it was causing partial
bowel obstructions and I would end up hospitalized, just definitely ill.
So we lived. I mean, then my illness and my
discomfort became a part of my husband's discomfort. So not
only now did I have the relationship with not feeling well,
he had a relationship with me not feeling well. Isn't
(12:36):
that interesting? Well? Yeah, I mean I don't see how
he couldn't be affected though, especially if you're having to
go to the hospital and it's it's crippling what you
were going through, and they couldn't figure out that it
was an alteration and they didn't know that. I, on
top of it, then had Celiac and I had two
little girls, so it was just brutal. And then how
I learned to cook is um. At this point, now
(12:57):
I'm eighty nine pounds. It's no longer even a track
of in l A. People are probably listening to this
and thinking I'm making slights on eating stories, which I'm not,
because one of the things I do own is also
UM eating disorder programs. I have said to humor about it,
so um. But then we came so I was super sick, now,
(13:19):
I mean I was just I was on the floor
in Mexico and the mouth of the jungle, and I
had had about obstruction and nobody found me for three days,
and my husband was in the United States and I
had two babies, and that's when we knew there's something wrong.
And I went back. I went back to Los Angeles.
(13:39):
I went through every test in the world. They found
the alteration, and then we said, okay, we have to
move back. And then I started apprenticing. I heard, you know,
I completely and totally on percent believe that if we listen,
we can receive information that will guide us. And I
heard a voice that said, what's in it? And I
(14:01):
had all these drugs lined up because the doctors thought
I either had small intestinal cancer or I had Crun's disease.
But I couldn't have the last biopsy to determine which
one it was because of the way the ulcer was,
it would cause my intestines to rupture and possibly kill me.
So I passed on the test and I went home
(14:21):
and I got very quiet, and I heard a voice,
and that voice is the inside voice that said what's
in it? And I applied that voice to not what's
first in the drugs that were in front of me
that I knew I couldn't even swallow because I couldn't
swallow water. Then the next thought was what's in the food?
And we were just major cattle ranchers and we weren't
(14:44):
growing produced yet, and I thought, okay, what's in the food?
And this is twelve years ago. Ten years ago, no
one was talking about what was in the food yet.
There were no books on healing your body with food.
There were no maps. So I began to apprentice with
a woman who was a Macrobiotics food counselor for digestive
health out of the Shawl Wellness Center in Spain. And
(15:07):
that's where I started to cook. And I was the
worst cook you have ever met. And you're time like
nasty girl, Like that's hard for me to believe now
because I've had your food and it's amazing. So you
were terrible. I mean, that's actually encouraging to me because
I'm like, damn, how do I learn how to cook
like this horrible? Like a can of green beans and
a jar of salsa and one fork and one pot.
(15:29):
I mean, I really did shop via the pretty pictures
on the boxes of the frozen food. I was like
those drumsticks are gorgeous. You put it in the car,
so I get it. That's and that's where I started
in macrobiotics. And I'm a sponge. I have a sponge
of a mind. I can memorize anything and everything. I mean,
(15:51):
I now speak Hebrew in Spanish because of my travels,
and um, had I had a different childhood, I probably
would have become a scientist or a doctor. But I
wasn't supposed to be that. So I then learned all
I could about macrobiotics, which is a great place to
start because it's all the whole food, so soaking your grain,
(16:12):
soaking your lagoon, your lagoons, using sea vegetables, using fermented foods,
using me so paste. That was major, and within I
would say within a month, I was starting to sit
down at the table to eat, which was huge. Within
six months, I was eating full plates of food, probably
even sooner. But there was always this voice inside of
(16:36):
me that again applies to the big life. A big
life just means a big point of view, and I
knew that there had to be a bigger point of view,
that macrobiotics could not be the only way, and there
had to be many ways to wellness, Luckily, I've been
blessed by having an adopted mother named Dr Joan Bornsinko,
(16:56):
and she has three pH d s from Harve Bird
Medical School and cellular cancer biology. And when I got
very sick, I called her and I said what do
I do? And she said, change your food now. So
I've been spoiled in receiving tons of information from her,
(17:17):
and then through another more networks of scientists that I've
connected to through her um the latest food science. So
the first studies on the microbiome weren't released until two
thousand and two, but by two thousand and seventeen there's
been ten thousand, and now to date, in the last
three years, there are thousands coming out each month. So
(17:39):
when I was doing this, there wasn't a lot of science,
but the science that did exist was coming to me,
and I was super blessed to have access to that,
and to have access to Joan, and then to Dr
Caroline Ross, who worked with Dr Andrew Wilde, and she
would come every month and she would check on me,
and I would cook, and they would both fly to
see me and eat my food and they watch me
(18:00):
get well. So I've just been super lucky so when
you say get well, what does that look like? Now?
I mean, did food completely heal your body? Are you
able to function barely? Man? Oh? Yeah? I mean now
I'm a walk in like feeling good about myself girl,
(18:20):
and and feeling good about it, you know, like I
that means I can eat and yeah I am eating.
Um I it looks like I get up every day
and I eat and I cook. So then from there,
I went to culinary school in Los Angeles because I
needed a bigger way, a bigger point of view. And
I went in as a spy. And I went in
(18:41):
as a spy for French and American classics because I
really wanted to know what it is in our food
that we crave and how do I do that? And um,
you know, traditional culinary school does not believe that you
can use Kingwa flower for to make something super classic.
So I had to kind of be a spy, which
I went to their school, so I should learn from them, right,
(19:04):
I should be quiet. And I took every bit of it,
but I was allergic to all of it. So I
would go home and recreate the recipes. And then I
wrote a book called My Kitchen Cure, which was just
because I knew I had to tell the world there
had to be a million knees out there. And that
book ended up selling like twenty thousand copies all on
my own. And then I became a chef on a
(19:26):
show called The Better Show New York. And then that
was another blessing for me because it showed me that
I wasn't alone, that there were there were millions of
me wanting to change our food. And then that led
me to Pinewood and becoming a chef there. But what
does wellness look like now? It looks like I worked
seven days a week. I am joyful. I don't suffer.
(19:49):
Every once in a while, I do because I did
find out I have celiac and so if I eat out,
I usually get sick. I don't eat out almost never, um,
which is a bummer because a lot of people interview
me and say who is your chef inspiration or where's
your favorite restaurant? And I go, yeah, you're like, so,
(20:11):
wellness looks like you know I'm here, I'm really in
the room, and I don't apologize for that. I think
healing my intestines, which is the root of our existence.
Right in Chinese medicine. It's the root of our being,
it's the basic of our wellness, and that means you.
For me, it's been a journey of discovering the self,
(20:33):
my emotional self, my spiritual self, and my well self.
So when I show up in the room, it's like
a mom and girl gets a real deal, real deal.
I love that you did so much research before. And
then i'm because when I hear that, I think, oh, well,
she's super qualified to own her own restaurant, be a chef.
(20:56):
But the way you describe it in the book is
that when your husband came to him like I bought Pinewood,
I bought this place, and you were like, no, no, no, no,
no no, Like I can't do that. There's no way.
It's that constant that or that constant critic in our head. Um.
I thought that was so interesting that that was your
first reaction. Oh I was pissed. I was like, oh,
(21:18):
hell no, you did not. Are you out of your mind?
First of all, it was do you know how much
work that is? It was second of all, in my
physically well enough? It was third, am I even capable?
Am I smart enough? I mean? Can I lead people?
And then forget the fact that it's back country, middle
of nowhere, going to become my somewhere. I mean, it's
(21:40):
not like I opened up in New York or l
A or Nashville, where there might be people, you know,
really interested in what I'm doing. It was just the
scariest one of this. I think having children and deciding
to become a mother and having fine wood are the
two of the scariest things I've ever done in my life.
Like another baby. Oh, it's the biggest baby. I mean, yeah,
(22:04):
I mean, and it's and it's it's investments, you know.
But it has changed me. It has been a huge
part of my wellness because it has put me into service.
And when we're serving other people, we're not We're in
the most generous place of abundance we can be. And
(22:24):
it's made me a really much much better human being. Yeah.
I've actually I've read a lot of that voice in
this book. It was a lot about I need to
just pause, let me listen to the universe or a
high power or whatever you want to call it, and say,
where am I supposed to be serving? Where am I
supposed to be? Like letting go of the outcome and
(22:44):
just opening yourself up to what the experience could be. Yeah,
because our expectations check us up every day. I mean,
I really try to wake up every day and lower
my expectation I do. I'm like, okay, wait, or like
if I have a project or I have a plan
and I go, this is what it's gonna look like.
I really try not to like. It's a fine balance
(23:07):
of dreaming into reality what you want to create, and
it's another dance within allowing it to unfold as it's
meant to be for you. And so it's a whole
lot of getting out of your own way. And and
when I was really sick, my grandfather going back to
my Catholic upbringing as a child. Um, and now I'm
(23:29):
just so big even in my my spiritual thinking is expanded,
like my food has um. I crawled on my knees
to the basilica with him, and Um, one of the
things you do is you bow down as low as
you can and you crawl on your knees in Mexico City,
and I crawled and my grandfather looked at me and
he said, do not ask her to heal you, meaning Guadalupe.
(23:53):
You ask her for a road to find your own wellness.
And so I really come from that that work ethic
of what is your part in this? And how are
what are you going to do? And I said, and
I prayed in that moment if if you help me
find a way to wellness, I'll serve. So I have
shown up in many places knowing it's my service. And
(24:17):
Pinewood is a massive part of my my my serving
journey majorly, and I don't know where else I'm going,
but I'll go there if the road unfolds, I suppose. Yeah,
well that is true. Um, and everything else you say
about Pinewood, it's you're creating this food, this different kind
of perspective for people with food. But so much goes
(24:38):
into that that I don't think people realize how difficult
it is to keep your restaurant clean of the gluten
or to watch all of these allergies and to keep
everything organic. It's expensive. So how do what does that
look like in comparison to other restaurants that we might
be used to. Well, first of all, we grow all
the food, and we raised the livestock. So my other
(25:01):
job is managing the farm. So I managed the farm,
and my team on the farm and we and my
husband oversees all the cattle, but I run the office
so grow you know, planting the seeds, um nurturing the seeds,
picking the bugs to keep it biodynamic, organic off of
the plants, harvesting them, and then bringing it all into
(25:24):
the restaurant means I can't waste anything. I can't waste
a carrot because that carrot actually cost me way more
than anybody else been on a carrot. And then from
there it's motivating my staff to stay invested. And so
almost everybody in Pine went in the kitchen helps out
in the fields. Every We also raise our own bees
(25:48):
and we raise our own mushrooms, so keeping them attached
to the farm helps keep the relationship with the food
as it comes into the kitchen. But I keep the
kitchen open. So it's a nineteen twenties general store and
gas station and the kitchen is in the middle of
the room. And the reason I did that is I
really wanted my team to have a relationship with the customer.
(26:12):
I wanted them to see me in the faces of them,
and I wanted every time they prepared food, I wanted
them to have that level of empathy and thoughtfulness with
each dish. And that's how you keep your kitchen managed
as you create a relationship and why behind the food
and a why behind the way you do it. And
(26:32):
it's a game changer. It's a culture that you're building.
And I did not know I was going to be right,
I was going to be leading a movement of kindness
and of thoughtfulness and inclusivity. Yeah you say that. You
feel like the energy of kindness goes into your cooking
like another ingredient. Like if I'm crabby, I'm going to
(26:53):
make the nastiest food. Really, you notice it's my food
is a little edgy. Oh yeah, it's kind of there's
some shitty soup. But I yeah, for sure. You know,
like my energy or if I'm rushing, I'm not focused,
it's not going to be as good. But if I'm
joyful and I'm relaxed, then it is going to be
(27:14):
so good you can stand it. And that's what is
in there. And I feel like I set that energy
and that little kitchen. I walk in the door, and
no matter what's going on with me, the second I
walk in the door, the first place I go is
behind the line and check in with my team. Then
I move out to the floor. So yeah, I mean
that's the deliciousness and food is love. I love too
(27:37):
that you said one of the fears you had about
actually being the chef was that you had experienced other
chefs or cooks or anyone that worked in a kitchen
at a restaurant as kind of aggressive and hard, and
you were like, that's not me, Like, I could never
lead that way. So it's you don't want Yeah, it's
like you're eating Usually when you go out to eat
in a restaurant, you're eating in a highly SHOs food.
(28:01):
There is a ticket there. First of all, from the
moment that food is ordered, it's ordered at how much
is this going to cost? Can we get it cheaper?
Where do we get it from? And then the next
place that it goes to, it goes into the kitchen.
There's a race to get it prepped that I understand well,
and then there is a race to get the ticket
time out to the table and then there so that
(28:23):
creates this anxious consciousness that's going on in the kitchen.
So you have chefs that are hierarchy. There's a hierarchy,
there's aggressive behavior, people are running under pressure, and there's
a lack of joy when you're doing that. So how
do you do that and remove that level of pressure.
(28:44):
I mean, we still have the pressure in Pinewood because
we get rocket in there. But I always make sure
that my team knows slow it down, take your time,
finish it right, relax, get off the line. Don't you
know no one is talking to each other, um in
a negative way. I mean, that's a that's a huge
piece for me. I don't have any bullies in my kitchen,
(29:07):
and I won't and I've had fantastic chefs come through
the door to work with me, probably way better than me. Um,
but they were assholes and I was like, homie, you
can't be here. It's like and if it's we have
a saying now in the kitchen, if you can't grow,
you gotta go. I love that. If you can't grow,
you gotta go. Well, I do think you're inspiring a
(29:27):
movement so much so. You guys have now opened up
Pondwood Mercantile, which you sell a lot of the jams,
the pickles. What else do you guys sell in there?
We sell the soups. So I make all these microbiome
soups because my whole thing is based in the biome
and how the biome changes everything, so which bacterias feed
and create which short chain fatty acids that then fight inflammation.
(29:49):
So if you're eating for those bacterias, you're building that
colony of gut homies I call them, then your body
is imbalanced. So I make these microbiome soups and everything
I do in the restaurant, you know, I really try
to do super Southern, but then I just mess with
the ingredients or I combine. I create a platter like
my the Southerner, which is yes, it's fried chicken, it's
(30:12):
gluten free and rice brand oil, but I make sure
there's colored greens with apple cider vinegar. And then the
collars feed a certain gut homie, and then the slaw
is made with carrots and what the carrot does in
the gut. So I'm looking at Southern recipes and I'm
playing with them so they support everyone's gut wellness and
the and the mercantile now sells everything. We do. An
(30:32):
elderberry barbecue sauce. We do an catch up, so the
uma bo she catchup is a Japanese vinegar that does
not feed yeast and candida and it also fights acid
indigestion and it works as a digestive enzyme. Oh my gosh.
I'm like it's so good. Right, So it's catchup and
people are like that's the best catch up for ever.
(30:54):
And I'm like, I'm like, dip it again, girl, dip
it again. Well, did you ever have any resist sense?
Because the Pinewood is a tiny town, and I mean,
I think that part of this movement to now is
that you have this whole investment group. You guys call
yourself Pinewood Eats, and you're you're wanting to continue to
inspire others to connect to real food. But like, did
people in Pinewood really get what that was all about
(31:17):
at first? Oh no, it was really brutal. Yeah, I didn't.
What I did write about in the book was that
was the pushback and was the resistance, and was um, hey,
you know I had taken this restaurant, this store that
it suggested general store and then that had been there
since the nineteen twenties and it had been, um it's
(31:37):
always been, you know, a fixture in the community, and
I changed it and I changed the food, and uh, yes,
I've built up the community because now I employ everybody
out there, and the more burghers we sell, the more cowboys,
the more potatoes we sell, the more people on the farm,
the more canned goods I sell, the more people work
in my cannon kitchen that I run. So I was
(32:00):
raising them up. But in the middle, before I could
raise them up at all that people could see was
the change I was bringing in. It was frightening, and
so there was a lot of resistance and there was
a lot of hate. And I learned a great lesson.
You know, if you want someone to have grace, you
have to be the grace. And so I just have
had to really again always take things back to myself
(32:24):
and um, how can I how can I make the
situation better by being better instead of being mad at them?
How can I be better? I asked my kids that
now when things go down without my go girl, what
was your partner? Because we have a partner. We have
a partner everything. And you know, we feed everybody in
pine Wood, whether they have money to pay or not.
(32:46):
There's a huge sign and we feed everyone because being
a hungry kid, I can't imagine growing all the food
that we grow there and serving the type of food
that we we serve which doesn't even exist in Nashville
because it's really right there from the farm. Uh, and
it's food allergy friendly. I can't imagine having access to
(33:08):
so much food and not being generous with it. So
we feed everybody, I mean, and I think now people
are proud of us, they're they're very proud. And now
we brought in these swanky partners. So yes, why which
is Dirk Spentley. He was a client of mine and
I know he has spoken so wonderfully about Palmond for
(33:29):
years now. But like, um, I think that it's funny
because Dirks like Dirks and I will go on these
not fad diets, but we were always kind of looking
into what to do for our bodies and all that stuff,
so we accept like organic food can be amazing, you know.
But that was kind of the thing that I just
did not understand if a pine Wood small town culture
(33:49):
would think that way, because we're you know, I feel
like a lot of people who have lived a certain
way for a certain amount of time, they're just kind
of setting their ways and don't want to really look
outside of the box on that stuff. Yeah, I think
what has happened there One of the big things is
I never when we opened, I should have been wondering
who would come, but instead I was just trying to
stay alive physically with keeping up with the pace of it.
(34:13):
But what has happened is Pinewood because it's such an
approachable blaze, because it's so comfortable in there that people
now drive for hours to eat there because they know.
We all know. We used to think it was only
on the coast or in the big cities that people
wanted to eat well. But what I know now more
than anybody else because of what I do in Pinewood,
(34:35):
is people everywhere want to feel well, they want to
eat better, and they want to make changes, but there
are very few places for them to go to experience
different approaches to cooking and food that are familiar. So
I have the burger in the handcut fries, and I
have the fried chicken. But then I'll have one of
the microbiome soups, or I'll have um, you know, something
(34:56):
from the farm that they maybe won't try anywhere else,
but it's a comfortable enough setting that they're like, oh,
I want to let me chase that, let me get
a bite of that. Yeah, And they're more open. Well,
I want to talk a little bit. We were talking
before about just how I think the science behind all
of this is so fascinating. Um and I know for
a lot of people, because it felt this way to
me when I first started learning about how food can
(35:18):
heal your body. It just feels overwhelming because there's so
much to learn. There's so much that I feel like
we've been misled to believe, as far as um, you know,
diets or what's actually good for our bodies. So can
you give some of the basics. Let's talk about maybe
the basics of like gut health and why that's so important. Yeah.
I think the first thing that happened to us is
(35:40):
we were we started to use the word healthy food,
and we view healthy food as punishment for when we've
gone off the rails. So we'll look at food like
a kale salad, and you know, actually, I think kale
can be delicious, but I think it needs to be
cooked or it needs to be finally finely chopped and
then massage to make a great salad. So and there's
(36:00):
a whole process to that. So we really view things
like healthy food or good for us food as punishment
that we've done something wrong, so we first. The first
layer for me about food and healing our body with
food is our own judgments and paying attention to what
are we eating and mindfulness. So I always say to people, first,
I want you to pay attention to what you're eating.
(36:21):
Just spend the week and you know, did you eat
a lot of dry crunchy? Do you eat a lot
of cheese? Do you have a lot of milk? Do
you have a lot of meat? Do you have a
lot of kale? Because you can create an excess and
imbalance in the gut with too much certain vegetables. So basically,
gut health is made up. We have all of these
bacteria's good, bad, and some are good in some people
(36:43):
and bad in other people. And what I love is
in the beginning of my journey when I said macrobiotics
was too rigid or too narrow for me, is I
am not a fundamentalist. I believe we are all individuals
and we all have to find our own yellow brick
road to health via food and the microbiome. Right now
is proof in that, and it has me super duper
(37:05):
excited because we some people can be vegans and they
do really well and they can be keto and they
do well, or they could be paleo, but somebody else doesn't.
And now we understand why because in the gut we
have all this different bacteria and the purpose of the
bacteria is to break down the food so that the
food can then go to work in the body, the
(37:26):
nutritional value in the food can work in the body.
Most of us have an imbalance at dysbiosis of bacteria
in the gut, in the intestines, at some place in
the intestines, some in the small intestines, some'm at the
top of the small intestine, some in the colon, the
bottom of the colon. It just depends. So eating for
the bacteria the gut homies because they're like the rider
(37:49):
dies and we don't want them to die. We want
them to multiply like babies kids. Do you remember that cars?
Oh my god. So we want them to multiply like
babies kids. And so how they do that is by
being fed plant foods. So one of the things about
veganism and why veganism works. And I'm not a vegan,
I'm a cattle rancher. I'm an open minded eater, and
(38:12):
I'm not not that vegans are an open minded They
are wonderful. And I was vegan for seven years and
I do eat predominantly plant based. But one of the
reasons that that works so well and it does work,
is because you're feeding the gut all these variety of
different plants, and each bacteria eats a different plant. So,
for example, Acromagia which is located in the new coastal
(38:35):
lining of the small intestine, and it works um as
it's a major anti inflammatory bacteria, and it's a very
small colony. It loves pomegranate and it loves whole cranberry,
but how many pome And if you have weak digestion,
you're not gonna eat pomegranate seeds because that's going to
irritate the lining. So whole cranberries are frozen in a
(38:58):
smoothie excellent. So knowing the bacteria and knowing the balance
of what that bacteria eats and what is your bacteria
load is key. So there is a test called biome
that I'm a super fan of, and I don't work
with them because I was literally about to say, well
how do we find out these bacterias? So V I O. M. E.
(39:19):
By and it's a company, and I love this company
because I've been using their test myself every ninety days.
It's key to staying well for me. I've watched a
lot of people that I go, girl, you need to
get the biome tests, and then they email it to me.
But they can they don't. So what happens is in
the biome tests, they check all the bacteria that they
(39:39):
can and you get a breakdown, a very simple breakdown,
and the breakdown says, you know, these are the foods
you need to eat. These are your super foods because
you need to eat these to fuel this particular bacteria.
One of the most common superfoods for everybody is um arugula. Usually,
unless you have an abundance of arugula, then you may
(40:00):
have to cut it back. Um. So then those are
the foods you the super foods you want to feed,
those the super dupa gut homies. And then there are
the foods that you want to have in that are
good for you. And you get that list that you
want to start adding in. And then you get the
minimized food list, which is all individual again, right, because
whatever your excess is might be someone's um. They don't
(40:25):
have it they have the you know what I mean.
So it's so you're gonna get a list of what
you need to minimize. So say you've been eating a
lot of broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage and Brussels sprouts
because you read that's good for you, or kale, and
so you go on a kale kick and all you
eat is kale or kale like given it to shadows.
(40:45):
Don't be mad at me, but or just whatever, or
you're just like an onion a holic, which I am.
These feed different bacterias and you have you can create
an excess of those bacterias. So it'll say minimize this,
and then you're gonna have the avoid And that's because
the bacteria that feeds off of that particular food is
(41:05):
already out of control and it could be causing problems
for you. So that's why I love the biome test
because it's the individual yellow brick road to wellness. It's like,
this is to me, the future of individualized medicine, and
this is the end of fat diets, which makes me
really happy because listen, you're got your microbiome changes with
(41:29):
every meal, and in ninety days you can completely reset
your gut. So if it changes with every meal, how
do you consistently keep your gut imbalance. I'm really mindful
of what I eat, so like I was just thinking today,
what like I look in like I'm a craver and
I get kicked, Like like I get on these things
(41:51):
like snap peas right now, that's like my jam. I'm
like in the fridge, i have a bag of snappieas
and I'm like snacking on them. And then I'll go, okay,
lay off the snap these. Or I've put onion in
everything for two weeks straight, cut that onion back. Or
It's really not about what to cut out of your
diet as much as it is about what to add in.
Because diet is about loss, right, so if we and
(42:14):
then that's always sad to us because it's it's lost.
So instead of thinking about what I shouldn't eat, I
always think about what I haven't been eating. And that
goes back to raising cattle the way we do, which
is grass fed, grass finished, mob grazing, and in mob
grazing you always win. There is a situation with any
livestock you always have to look at what have they
(42:34):
been eating, what is their nutritional profile. Right. So each
pasture on the farm, we move our cattle right now,
which is the beginning of the high season, three times
a day, and we move them to each pasture where
you might look at it and think, oh, it's just
the same grass, but it's not the same grass. It
has a different amount of water, a different amount of sunshine,
(42:54):
it has a different um periods of the day where
it gets more sunshine than another pasture, and it's a
different straight it's a different type of grass that we're
growing in each pasture. And this is how you create
um wellness and balance and organic livestock. Well. I when
when I got sick, this all went to my own mind.
I was like, well, wait a minute, I need to
(43:15):
be grazing better. I need to graze from a big,
old variety of foods and that's how you stay well. Right.
So that's what's so interesting about even the mentality of
a diet or I was just thinking when you were talking,
like everyone you know with the gut health of the
big conversation is usually oh, we'll just get on a probiotic,
but like, how would one probiotic actually work for multiple
(43:36):
types of people because we're all so different internally it.
First of all, it doesn't anymore, and they know that.
And and now I mean, I'm not against probiotics at all,
Like I say, take it, do you? But for me,
I did not. I did not ever take probiotics. I
healed that alceration with um fermented foods and eating a
variety of foods to feed it. So you've got probiotic
(43:57):
foods and the probiotic and the gut bacteria. That's the
good homie is the probiotic, and then it lives off
of this variety of probiotic food So the other thing
that people do is they'll go ahead and they'll take
a probiotic, but they're not they're not feeding even those bacterias.
So you have to live a really big point of view.
(44:18):
You've got to have a big life outlook at what
you're eating. Yeah, let's talk a little bit too about
gut issues and emotional health, because you talk a lot
about this in your book, and I thought that was
so fascinating how the two are actually linked. Can you
kind of explain that? Yeah, So, um, gut health. First
of all, seratonin is created in the gut um your
(44:41):
vegas nerve, which is the main nerve that connects the
gut in the brain. UM bacteria travels through that nerve
um the whole the whole way. That we're looking at depression,
even schizophrenia right now, and the scientists are studying this
big time UM mood disorders, U all of the things
(45:01):
that were in anxiety. I mean, anxiety is huge. And
I can tell before I knew this level of science
and had really dove into that, I could tell you
that when I my inflammation and my testines comes back,
which it is a dance you said earlier, how do
I live? I take care of myself, Like when I've
been working. I just finished a two week work grind
(45:24):
and these three days today's Wednesday, right, I'm just kind
of struggling because I get this extreme fatigue in my
body because I have Hashimoto's room a toward arthritis UM
technically crowns disease, celiac and psoriasis. So I live this
dance of like did I sleep? Did I drink too
much wine? Did I um? Like? What? How did I
(45:46):
throw myself off? Am I just plain exhausted? So I
can tell when my gut goes down and I don't
feel well or I feel a stomach ache or I
feel sort of bloated, my mind goes down, and if
I get glutened, I'm like an emotional wreck. Two days
after I feel that too. Yes, I just it's just
(46:07):
the way that it works for me, you know. I mean,
if I don't feel well, my mind isn't well. So
the whole gut brain science, uh, and the connection this
is just the beginning. I mean, we are really going
into unchartered territories that again are liberating, you know, because
there are all kinds of really fantastic studies that are
(46:29):
now studying depression and people with manic depression and bipolar
and they're studying their gut microbiomes and their bacterias, and
they're finding that a lot of people, the majority and
these studies, have um imbalances in their microbiome, and they
have high levels of particular bacteria in common. And when
(46:51):
they bring that bacteria back into balance, their emotional wellness
comes into balance. There was a wonderful study UM done
that showed the families that have inherited depression genetically, you know,
inherited depression, and they're finding that maybe what's inherited is
the microbiome and which is again why I get so excited,
(47:17):
is any It's liberating because you're right now we're living
in a time where it's what can we do for
ourselves is finally on the table, Like how do I
become a better person emotionally and physically? And what is
my part in in in this? How do I do it? How?
And now there's all kinds of science to back up
(47:37):
the house. Yeah, I'm just glad the conversation is moving
so rapidly because it's it's frustrated me for years that
we don't I haven't felt like our society connects how
sick we are with what we're putting in our bodies
and what we're putting in our food and all of
these things that we do on the daily we just
don't even think about. You know. It's just like this
(47:57):
thing that we do and we're not conscious of all
that actually affects the way that our system works. Yeah.
I mean, and we've only been eating from a from
like a glutton nous sort of pleasure place for a
very short period of time and history, the majority of
people on this planet didn't have access to food the
way that we do. In the last fifty years, so
(48:20):
food is changing, but it's empowering to me, you know,
I like, I have two girls, and my daughters have
watched me find my way back to wellness and remain
in wellness. You know, once you get well, you've got
to stay there. And so they watched the dance, and
I just know that, you know, God forbid if anything
(48:41):
happens to me like happened to my mother, I've I've
they've they've witnessed a great mirror and how to take
care of themselves. What would be I mean, because you
break down all of this in the book. The book
is called My Pinewood Kitchen. If you guys are interested
in finding out more details about the bacteria's we're talking
about in the different ways the different foods that can
(49:03):
heal and balance your system. But if there is there
one thing that you could say that people could do
or they can make a change, or are or our
body is just too diverse to put it in one No, yeah,
I mean we you can easily make a change. You
can start to get to know your body. I think
first one, pay attention what are you eating like? Without judgment,
(49:25):
because we're so judged, we're so judging of ourselves in
our food. We're so critical of what we're eating and
what we're feeding ourselves when we're feeding our kids, and
what did we have yesterday? So one, what did you eat?
What is your excess? Then identify it. Then start paying
attention to how you feel after you eat certain things.
Your body is there to talk to you. It's a
(49:48):
living being, you know, you know, we're just inside of
this living being. So and then the next thing is,
you know, um, pay attention to the main things that
that you're eating and how you feel. So a lot
of people and a lot of chefs and a lettle
restaurateurs go, oh, these people are on this gluten kick
and they're getting off of it and it's a fat
(50:08):
And my thing is, no, people just want to feel better.
So if they're starting with gluten, great, I'm Celiac. But
if you want to come into my restaurant and you
want to order gluten free, power to you, because I'm
trying to support you to figure out why you don't
feel bad. You know, Do I think gluten free is
for everybody? Absolutely not. Do I think dairy free is
for everybody? No? I think you get to figure it out.
(50:31):
And if you can digest. You know that you can.
But the best thing that you can do is you
can add more plants to your diet and if you
have weak digestion, cook them. I don't necessarily think that
eating raw vegetables all day is good for anyone. I
think that warm cooked foods are great. I think that
smoothies are a great place to start. Um, if you
(50:54):
want to bring your kids on board, But I don't
even think about kids. I think about you. I think
about just do you and start to form a relationship
with what you're eating and mindful with it. And the
more plants you can fold into your gut, literally, the
better the gut is going to be. And then you
know your sugar I mean, because sugar wears us out,
(51:16):
and it's just again, it goes back to the first
place to start is mindful. And then once you get
that mindfulness, I almost feel like all these opportunities for
you to discover a path to your own wellness are
going to open up for you. Yeah. I love that.
I'm gonna link the description, Um, I'm sorry, I'm gonna
link the book my Pinewood Kitchen and the description of
(51:37):
this podcast. I can't wait to start cooking the recipes.
We had a tomato soup frenzy at this house the
other night, like everyone was fighting over the last bowl.
It's so good. And I saw that it's a recipe
in the books. I'm so excited. Oh good, you had
the tomato soup. And what else did you eat? I
don't even remember what we had. We had wings, we
had fried chicken, we had um, what do we have?
(52:00):
Some cold slaw? Baked beans? I mean it was so good,
potato salad, a full southern now, it was amazing. Oh
that makes me so happy. Hey, what are you guys?
So you guys delivered on a Friday. So what with
this coronavirus stuff happening? What does that look like for
your Pinewood business? We are so blessed. I thought when
(52:22):
the coronavirus hit that I was going to have to
close because I rely on people coming an hour each way. Um,
and I thought, okay, we have to close, and we
closed for a weekend, and then I thought, okay, we
can stay open. So I'm partners with one of my
other partners in Pinewood, Ryan Chapman, were also partners in
(52:42):
another business called Integrative Life Center on music Grow and
that's an eating disorder, depression and UM chemical dependency program.
That's a whole person program. And so I do the
food service for I l C. And that really saved us.
And then the next thing that happened is we run
I run a cannon kitchen, and my goal was just
(53:05):
to not let the twenty people that work for us
on the farm and in the restaurant be out of work.
I mean, I just was like, how do I keep
these people employed? And so between running a full time
canning business and then UM the Integrative Life Center, and
then we opened up for pickup and take out and
now we deliver in Nashville Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Franklin, Brentwood, Fairview,
(53:28):
all over the city. And now it's changing again that
we're doing these farm boxes and these patiful boxes of
produce and beef and pork and eggs and cake and
chicken and biscuits and jam. And so what's happening is
Pinewood is really finding its way into Nashville and the
(53:50):
greater Nashville area. And I haven't had to lay one
person off. In fact, my kitchen is now running seven
days a week, and I'm desperately in need to find
more cooks and more collide. That's amazing, especially right, I mean,
it's everything, and I think it's that. I just you know,
I love. The energy that you put out is the
(54:11):
energy you get back? Yeah, I agree. Where can people
you talked about the Pinewood boxes, Where could they find
that kind of stuff? They can go to Pinewood Kitchen
and Mercantile dot com and it says pick up, pick up.
There's a little button right in the center and you
click on that and that takes you to our online program.
And as you scroll through, you'll see the food that
(54:31):
can be delivered to you. And as you scroll down,
it says from the mercantile and everything that I'm growing
can go into that box. Zucchini, tomatoes, Um, I'm waiting.
We haven't robbed our hives yet, but soon we'll rob
our hives and I'll have honey. Um. All the things
that we do in Pinewood because we're a full functioning farm, mushrooms,
(54:52):
produce beef, pork, everything can go in the box. And
now we're baking our own bread and so we're adding
it all. L yeam, I tell you guys, Like seriously,
it was one of the best meals I've had a
long time. Plus we got a box that's kind of
the full experience. It's just fun right now to spice
things up. I know, I'm getting tired of like having
to figure out what to cooks. It was super nice
(55:13):
to just have all these new ideas come right to
our doorstep. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, So we're rolling. I mean,
we're just we're we've stayed super insulated. The other thing
that we've done in Pinewood is my team is small,
and so to keep them out of grocery stores, we
feed them. So no one is if you're working with
(55:34):
us in Pinewood, you're not shopping in grocery stores. You're
eating from the restaurant and the farm, and it's you know,
it's community. I think Pinewood is that is what things
used to be, and I hope it's what we go
back to where um, what that store probably was in
the nineteen twenties. It was the hub where you got everything,
and everyone is living off of that store and there's
(55:56):
a connectedness to that. And now we've opened up our
outdoor seating with umbrellas and social distance tables, and my
whole team wears gloves and masks because, um, I am
high risk and so are a couple other people that
work with me. So we're just moving in this new
world together. Yeah. Well, I can't wait to come visit
when it it opens back up in person. Um, where
(56:18):
can people find you in the meantime other than the website?
Do you have social media sites? Oh? Yes, I social media?
Like three pages on Facebook, I'm all over that place.
I've got me McCormick, and then on Instagram three es
M E E. McCormick and then find with Kitchen and
(56:39):
workantile on Instagram, and then just me McCormick on Facebook,
and then fine with Kitchen and Workantile on Facebook, and
then me Tracy McCormick on Facebook. I feel like I'm
just like that you just took over Facebook. You know
what It's so interesting about Facebook? Don't sleep on it.
I built a really big platform over there the last
few years and everybody kind of le Facebook. But can
(57:01):
I tell you Facebook is coming back? Oh my gosh,
it's huge because everyone is on there so all of this.
I mean, I've always said don't sleep on Facebook because
the audience there is a different, maybe different type of
Audience and Instagram, but they're super active right now and
I like that because I like that people have a
(57:22):
place to connect. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get back
on the Facebook game. I've kind of slacked, girl, don't
slack well me. I thank you so much for doing this.
It's so nice to finally talk to you. We have
so many connections, so it's so great that I can
actually connect with you. I'm really excited this. I love
talking to you too, and I love being able to
share the goodness of pine Wish. Yes, you, guys, check
(57:43):
out my Pinewood kitchen. It's sold everywhere online right now,
and get a Pinewood box. Do it. I highly recommend it.
Thanks me for being here, and thank you guys for listening.
This is Kelly Henderson and you've been listening to the
Velvet Edge podcast. I truly believe that every one of
us has a little velvet and a little edge, so
it's so important to remember that to be strong, you
(58:05):
must be solved too. Thank you so much for sharing
in those stories with me. You can follow Velvet's Edge
on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as Velvet's Edge
dot com if you have it yet. Go to Apple
Podcast and subscribe, Rate and review this podcast. Join me
every Wednesday for more conversations on lifestyle, beauty, and relationships.
(58:26):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Kelly Henderson
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