On the Road: Farm to Table in Pinewood

Files from the Road: Farm to Table in Pinewood, fourth in a series. This story begins with a lettuce-wrapped grass-fed-and-finished burger and homemade potato chips, and ends with a gluten-free hummus veggie pizza.

Lettuce-wrapped grass-fed burger with fresh potato chips fried in rice bran oil

I’ve written this before. When I go home to Tennessee, as I did last week, I ask myself, “What am I going to eat?” That question was soundly answered when I was told about the Pinewood Store & Kitchen in the unincorporated town of Pinewood. “The food is organic,” my friend told me and that was all I needed to hear to ride the few miles of countryside to the friendly market.

Pinewood Store & Kitchen

Purchased in January of this year, it has become an instant classic and hub of the community, where one can pick up everything from fresh-picked biodynamic organic produce (farm workers brought in boxes of sweet peppers while I was eating!) and frozen cuts of non-GMO sustainably grown grass-fed beef, or load up their stomachs on a fresh-cooked meal and commune with neighbors. There were five patrolmen from the Sheriff’s Department having lunch when we were there, “so you know it’s good,” reasoned my friend.

Fresh biodynamic produce from Pinewood Farm across the road

It took me longer to order than it took to eat because I wanted everything on the menu.

Pinewood Store & Kitchen, menu changes daily

Mee Tracy McCormick, TV chef and author of “The Kitchen Cure” – How I Cooked My Way out of Chronic Auto-Immune Disease and Prevented Cancer with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes, is the mastermind behind the Pinewood Store & Kitchen, a true farm-to-table operation, with her and husband Lee’s biodynamic farm and sustainable cattle ranch just across the road. Never has food been so fresh and so LOCAL!

Mee Tracy McCormick, author and chef

While I have tremendous respect (and support!) for long-time family restaurants, I’ve been in California a long time and need my organic food! I’ve followed the organic movement in Los Angeles since it’s inception (in 1988, the only organic food you could buy in a health food store was dried beans). Eventually, we got organic dairy and produce, but it took a LONG time.

Pinewood Store & Kitchen chalkboard

As soon as I wolfed down my meal, I found myself talking to cattleman Lee McCormick and asking him about his cattle operation. I returned the following day to film an episode of Late Bloomer on his ranch. Look for that in the coming weeks! Subscribe, so you won’t miss it.

Lee McCormick pointing to his Civil War era ranch

We truly are what we eat and when we recognize “that we are directly responsible for our health with everything we put in our mouths” as Lee put it, there really is no choice. You must go out of your way to find the healthiest food available. After a tour of the ranch, we stopped back at the cafe and Mee had just pulled this scrumptious, mouth-watering pizza from the oven.

Gluten-free hummus veggie pizza

She was trying out a new recipe. I wolfed that down, too. (Oh yes, you’ll see that in the episode!) The menu rotates daily to offer a nutritional balance, and no one is turned away for lack of money, because as the sign says, “Community Matters.” ~

If you enjoyed this post, please let me know. This series is about my musings on the road, interviews with family farmers, and whatever strikes my fancy. Thanks for reading, please subscribe if you haven’t, and share with a friend. Thanks for reading! – Kaye

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Tags: biodiversity, biodynamics, cattle, community, cows, do-it-yourself, farm to table, farming on small scale, gardening, gardening web series, green your world, growing your own vegetables, Kaye Kittrell, Kaye Kittrell Late Bloomer, kitchen, Late Bloomer, organic, plants, ranch, Sustainability, vegetables

Category: Community, Resources, Sustainable Living