‘Tis the season for many things, and I bet one of them is over-eating.

If you’re going to be a glutton, do it right – and get some food for thought while you’re at it. Feast on some great food books.

Some are cookbooks and some are books about food. Stay tuned to the end of this column and you will get a recipe for a dish that will change the world as we know it. It is my holiday gift to you.

As a teacher, I get all kinds of excuses. My favorite one was “I couldn’t make it to class because a transmission fell on my head.” And it was true.

I thought I’d have to use the classic dog-ate-my-review-copy excuse when my pooch wolfed down most of the UPS parcel containing Love Soup (W.W. Norton, $22.95) by Anna Thomas.

In vegetarian cookbook circles, Anna Thomas is the Shakespeare of the form. Even Alanis Morissette, who once played God in a movie, hangs with Thomas. Here’s an online cooking experience courtesy of the Huffington Post.

But as an animal-flesh-eating swine, I didn’t see myself as the ideal person to review the book, since I’m not part of the target audience. So I gave the gnawed-up copy to my friend Angela, a vegetarian whose commitment is beyond reproach. The publisher kindly provided me with a non-chewed copy and I passed that on to Angela as well, so she could work on the recipes she missed because the dog ate them.

I have nothing but praise to report from the Bill’s Book Blog test kitchen. Angela is a tough, discriminating audience, but she thinks Love Soup is one of the best cookbooks she’s used. Angela is a gourmet and an engineer, so you know her endorsement means a lot. Weight Watchers Inc. has also given Love Soup its seal of approval.

As Dear Ol' Mom used to say, “If you can read, you can cook.” Even those of you who are intuitive little-of-this-little-of-that cooks might enjoy trying something new.

This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.