Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes

Smith, a lecturer (communications, Northwestern Univ.) and essayist, looks at cooking as a metaphor for life skills as it involves planning, preparation, and completion. Here, the author blends anecdotes with corresponding recipes and taking a year of cooking lessons for Jonah, her oldest son, before he heads off to the University of Illinois. She delves into her experiences: growing up with hippie parents; playing drums for the Blake Babies, an alternative rock band that rubbed elbows with the likes of the Lemonheads and They Might Be Giants; following a macrobiotic diet; and being a parent, which she says is the hardest thing she has ever done. The recipes are accessible with most ingredients available at health food stores (with the exception of human placenta, a supernutritious food source, according to Smith). The stories are somewhat hard to follow as they are not chronological.