In her newest book, My Kitchen Cure: How I Cooked My Way Out of Chronic Autoimmune Disease and Prevented Cancer with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes (MeeLee Publishing - June 2013), Mee Tracy McCormick chronicles her journey from near death to a vital, healthy woman with two children, husband and a career that includes going into communities and teaching what she learned about turning around a health crisis.
Her story starts with hereditary Crohn's disease, an intestinal ulceration, a diagnosis of cancer waiting to be confirmed, and debilitating daily pain that knocked her down and left her teetering at a painfully thin 96 pounds. Medical tests, treatments and medicines that threatened to kill her before they cured her had backed Mee into a health crisis corner.
Not knowing how to proceed or even how to cook, Mee took it upon herself to transform her kitchen into her personal healing "laboratory." She didn't know it then, but she understands now that by learning about the healing power of food, she was creating something bigger than a cure for a personal ailment. She was creating a lifestyle... a new way of being... a movement.... A REAL FOOD LIFE that could benefit everyone and, most notably, the 55 million people in the United States alone who suffer from an auto-immune disease, of which Crohn's Disease is one.
More than just "preaching" about this REAL FOOD LIFE, Mee has taken it upon herself to teach what she knows in public schools to private homes. She has set up Real Food Makeover Community Kitchens in Nashville and Los Angeles, sometimes working with card tables and butane burners, cooking with small groups or upwards of 150 people at a time. More importantly, she includes the less privileged in her mission.
"I know now that going through such challenging health issues that I still have to pay attention to, that there was something more I needed to do," says Mee Tracy McCormick. "And, when I hear someone say that they were able to cut down on their diabetes medication or how they lost 40 pounds by just giving up foods that come in a box or can, it makes my heart sing."
Written in three parts, My Kitchen Cure recounts:
• The Who: Raised in Appalachia on a diet of chipped ham and ketchup sandwiches by a single mom who died young of hereditary Crohn's Disease; suffered herself for 10 years or more from debilitating abdominal pain and weight loss; married and started a family, but almost lost one daughter in pregnancy due to complications caused by her condition; eventually found herself doubled up in pain on the floor for 48 hours alone with her two young girls in the Mexican jungle; moved with her husband and family back to their ranch in Tennessee to get medical help; made the rounds to doctor after doctor whose solutions entailed dangerously invasive tests and mounds of daily drugs; finally found her answer in her kitchen; then created The Real Food Makeovers, going into her Nashville Community and shifting food deserts to food oases.
• The What and Why: Part two covers topics like, "What is autoimmune disease," "Everything you need to know about sugar," "Dairy, to eat it or not eat it," What's real & what's fake in the food world," and "Feeding our kids real food every day," to name a few.
• The How: The kitchen staples and equipment that a REAL FOOD kitchen should stock, along with 162 pages of recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and everything in between.
Mee Tracy McCormick is a Real Food and Autoimmune Cooking Expert, TV cooking personality, a Food Makeover Consultant, a Community Food Advocate and the author of My Kitchen Cure: How I cooked My Way Out of Chronic Autoimmune Disease and Prevented Cancer with Whole Foods and Healing Recipes.
For more information on Mee, her REAL FOOD LIFE, her REAL FOOD MAKEOVERS and her book, visit
www.MeeTracy.com. Her book is currently available on
amazon.com where it is fast being lauded as the go-to book for autoimmune disease.
