This week Scott Crane is in New Orleans, eating warm beignets smothered in powdered sugar. His fingers are white and sticky from holding the deep-fried dough and the table in front of him is covered in a film of sugar.

Technically, he’s not physically in New Orleans—he’s seated in his motorized wheelchair at his kitchen counter in Northbrook—but he’s there by way of mouth, at least.

“We transport ourselves wherever we cook,” said Eileen Considine Boggins, who, along with Scott, has prepared the beignets.

Once a week, the Midwest Palliative & Hospice CareCenter employee meets to cook with Crane, a 23-year-old with a rare form of muscular dystrophy called centronuclear myopathy. The two have been cooking together for about six months.

Already, their “cooking therapy”—a first for Midwest CareCenter—has inspired a blog, a cookbook to benefit the Glenview nonprofit and a charity called In Chef’s Hands. Inspired by a meeting with Crane, former Sunda chef Rodelio Aglibot founded the organization along with chef Todd Stein of Florentine to connect chefs with foodies who are sick or disabled.

From An Active Life to Bouts of Hospitalization

According to Crane’s mother, Teena Crane, there are fewer than 50 people in the world with his type of muscular dystrophy, a progressive condition that affects every muscle including his lungs. Crane, who went to Glenbrook North, was diagnosed at age 4.

“He led the most normal life,” Teena Crane said. “Then he started falling and tripping, and then he went into a scooter, and then by junior high he stopped walking completely.”

In the fall of 2009, Crane’s lungs became so weak that he was hospitalized for 2 1/2 months. He could no longer take classes at a community college, work at Corner Bakery in Northbrook Court or volunteer at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

“His whole life was taken away from him,” Teena Crane said.

By November 2009, Crane weighed 70 pounds, and couldn’t eat solid food—let alone lift his head off the pillow.

“I live to eat,” said Crane, who has always wanted to go to culinary school. “They wanted to put a feeding tube in my stomach.”

With the help of breathing treatments and medication, Crane is about 130 pounds today, his mother says, and can power through a plate of beignets—or half a platter of Emeril Lagasse’s risotto with four times the cheese, as he did the first time he and Boggins cooked together. But his condition, which leaves him fatigued, often makes it hard for him to breathe and is progressively weakening his lungs and heart.

“He’s living a miracle,” his mother said.

Food Lover Invents His Own Therapy: Cooking

Crane and Boggins met last spring, when a lung specialist first recommended hospice care for him.

“He was gravely ill, and that’s when they were looking to see if he wanted music therapy, a religious counselor ... ” Teena Crane said.

But Crane wasn’t interested in either.

“I’m not planning on dying tomorrow,” he told the music therapist.

“You don’t know my son,” Teena Crane said. “He’s a kid with nine lives.”

Jokingly, Crane suggested cooking therapy. His social worker happened to know that Boggins, who works as a care consultant for Midwest CareCenter, had received a culinary degree from Kendall College. The social worker asked Boggins if she would be interested in meeting Crane. They got together right away, first just to talk about cooking, since Crane was too weak to prepare food yet.

“We fell in love,” said Boggins, who now volunteers to cook with Scott every Monday, since working with hospice patients directly falls outside the regular parameters of her job. On days when Crane isn’t feeling well, the pair still gets together to go over recipes or talk about restaurants and chefs.

“On the days I’m going there, Scott isn’t a sick kid for a couple of hours,” Boggins said. “We’re enjoying our time, and we’re not even talking about him being ill.”

Crane gets his ideas from cookbooks, which he checks out in bulk from the Northbrook Public Library. He also describes himself as “addicted” to the Food Network.

The recipe for beignets was something Crane found on-line.

“I know that I can’t possibly go to New Orleans,” he said. “Well, I can’t physically go, but I can bring New Orleans to me.”

Crane ‘Lives to Eat’ and Help Others

Not long after Crane and Boggins started cooking together—with Teena Crane as ”cleanup committee” and Scott’s caregiver and best friend, Shola Kayode, as sous chef—Crane came up with the idea to start a blog. They now chronicle their food adventures regularly at “Live To Eat…Tales From Cooking Therapy."

A recent entry described their unusual strategy for making baklava. When it was time to crush the walnuts, Crane simply dumped them in a zip-close bag and rolled over them a few times in his 366-pound wheelchair.

“He said, ‘Great chefs use all their resources,’” Boggins recalled.

The one thing their blog posts doesn’t include is recipes—which readers have been clamoring for, Crane said. That’s where the cookbook comes in. Along with Boggins, he plans to publish and sell a cookbook based on their recipes, with all proceeds to benefit Midwest CareCenter.

“We wanted to do something that could help others, and we wanted to raise money for this wonderful organization that has helped me so much,” Crane said.

The cookbook probably will include recipes from blog readers and Midwest CareCenter employees, as well as recipes that he and Boggins have made, Crane said. Although the pair may start their cooking with an idea or recipe from another chef, they always make it their own.

“We’re both garlicaholics. So whenever it calls for garlic, we always double or triple what it calls for,” Crane said.

Up next week? Cream of garlic soup, naturally.

Photos by Steve Handwerker.

Readers who wish to contribute recipes to the cookbook may submit them to chefscottchefeileen@gmail.com.