Linda Ronstadt can't sing now, but she has a cookbook that she calls 'a song' and tells the story of the Sonoran Desert

In the desert, Ronstadt is most at home in places like the tiny town of Canelo, Ariz. (Photo by Cassidy Arazia for NYT)

Linda Ronstadt can sing no more, due to Parkinson’s disease, but she can write, and may have completed her oeuvre with a different sort of composition. Her new cookbook, Feels Like Home: A Song of the Sonoran Borderlands, has only 20 recipes, but “is a way to explain why the arid land that starts in Arizona and stretches into Mexico’s west coast is her foothold in the world,” writes Kim Severson of the New York Times after spending two days with her in the Sonoran Desert. "It’s a story she has told through music, and now wants to tell — as much as she can — through food."

The book, co-written with former Timesman Lawrence Downes, is "a braid of stories about her family and the history, politics and music of the bicultural borderland that she loves," and recipes "like caldo de queso, with its clear broth and glistening cubes of cheese, and Sonoran enchiladas built from thick, fried corn tortillas," Seversn reports. "The book has recipes for ancient desert food, like long-simmered tepary beans, and some only-in-Tucson dishes, like cheese crisp. . . . albóndigas, the spiced meatballs poached in water, and a quirky, modern concoction called tunapeños — essentially jalapeño peppers halved and stuffed with tuna salad. The book devotes four pages to tortillas de agua: a Sonoran staple made with wheat flour, water, salt and a touch of lard or shortening spun into a flaky, nearly translucent tortilla larger than a steering wheel."

Severson's visit began with a dinner Ronstadt buddy Katya Peterson assembled with "food harvested at Mission Garden, a plot of land whose crops represent more than 4,000 years of continuous cultivation in the Tucson Basin," she reports. "A fig tree stewarded by the Ronstadt family grows there, as well as cactus samples collected from the land where Ms. Ronstadt’s grandfather was born." But for her, "Dinner parties are not easy," Severson writes, quoting her: “I’m finding it harder and harder as I get older and deafer to hold conversations.”

But Ronstadt, 76, had an interview with Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour, who made it the focus of a story about her very varied singing career (she won a Grammy for Canciones de mi Padre, "Songs of My Father") and the book today. "Linda Ronstadt is a portrait of courage," host Judy Woodruff said.