By Stephanie Allmon
sallmon@star-telegram.com

Rocker Sheryl Crow seems more surprised than anyone that she has written a cookbook -- and that it emphasizes healthful, seasonal eating.

Having grown up in the "meat and potatoes" Midwest and later adopting a diet of hotel room-service food and "overcooked catering spreads," she never worried about eating for wellness, she says; after all, she appeared fit and trim, and by all accounts, healthy.

But a breast cancer diagnosis in 2006, at the age of 44, radically changed Crow's thoughts about food.

"My cancer diagnosis screamed 'vulnerable' to me," she writes in the cleverly named If It Makes You Healthy (St. Martin's, $29.99). "Never once in my life had I really considered what I put into my body as having a direct connection to my wellness."

She began working with a nutritionist and hired a personal chef, Chuck White, with whom she co-wrote the cookbook. White, she says, opened her eyes to a new world of colorful fruits and vegetables, cancer-fighting spices and the importance of eating seasonal, organic, sustainable foods. The dishes in the cookbook -- about 125 of them -- are the ones she eats whether she is on the road (blue corn tortilla-crusted red snapper with margarita butter; grilled sweet corn soup with garlic popcorn) or at home in Nashville with her two young sons, Wyatt and Levi (basil and apple marinated chicken; banana bread pudding).

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/28/3185286/sheryl-crows-cancer-diagnosis.html#tvg