Philadelphia Weekly

Kara Zuaro has lost count of how many musicians have stayed the night. All she knows is it's impossible to say no to a struggling band at the end of a long night when they turn to her and say, "So can we stay with you?" In the morning (or afternoon) she's greeted by a heap of bleary-eyed musicians--ravenous, spent and hung over. Enter Zuaro and the holy grail of life on tour: a home-cooked breakfast.

Zuaro is the Mother Teresa and Claude L�vi-Strauss of indie rock. As a music journalist, she's attended more concerts than most. Since "some of these bands look so hungry all the time and so poor," her immediate impulse is to fix them a hot meal.

When she's not feeding musicians, she's asking them what they eat. At the end of an interview Zuaro hands bedraggled artists a business card that politely inquires, "Do you like to cook?" Affirmative nods lead to correspondence, friendships and recipe submissions. Zuaro's cookbook I Like Food, Food Tastes Good: In the Kitchen With Your Favorite Bands, out this month, is a collection of gastronomic gems from more than 100 bands, from the Decemberists' Pork Loin to They Might Be Giants' Countrypolitan.

I Like Food dispels the myth that most bands are content to sustain themselves on drugs and beer alone. The nomadic lifestyle is grueling and subsisting on mass-produced food takes its toll. The band Maplewood stock up on "mellow domestic vibes before [we] hit the turnpike and spend the coming weeks in a blur of Cracker Barrels and iron skillets" by making Night-Before-Tour-Mac-and-Cheese.

The book also documents the bands' earnest, limited culinary efforts while traveling down that never-ending turnpike. Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos writes a column in The Guardian on the food he eats on the road. Death Cab for Cutie's staple snack is their Veggie Sausage and Peanut Butter Sandwich. Kudzu Wish packed the tour van with a 15-pound bag of basmati (and tried, in vain, to hook a rice cooker up to the cigarette lighter). And then there's the long-awaited detox and homecoming. "When I get home from tour, I look forward to cooking for my wife more than almost anything," says John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats.

In addition to offering a slew of anecdotes about musicians' attempts at feeding themselves, the book preserves the bands' wording and instructions. Hence the recipe submitted by NOFX's El Hefe: "Yea, take a pack of top ramen, mix in a can of corn and boil dat shit. Yea dat some real ghetto ass gourmet shit." It's followed by Zuaro's deadpan translation: "Prepare ramen according to package directions."

Devendra Banhart's recipe for Africanitas Ricas begins, "Chop the beautyful [sic] godsends (the bananas) into the size of eight quarters glued together." It might be the first recipe in print to include more than 115 exclamation points.

Zuaro is now on the road herself, promoting the book at concerts. I caught up with her at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom, where Dr. Dog were sound-checking. The Philadelphia band is represented in the cookbook by keyboardist Zach Miller's Mom's Muffin Bread. Zuaro arrives with copies of the book and a Tupperware overflowing with Belle and Sebastian's Halloumi, Radicchio and Tomato Sandwiches. So far today Miller's had a stale bagel and a slice of pizza. "I guess I really like starches," he shrugs, inhaling one of the sandwiches, and his first vegetable of the day.