February's here, which means the Valentine's-Day-industrial-complex has shifted into high gear. Not that chocolates and heart-shaped sentiments are evil, but if you're seeking a deeper love and stronger relationships that don't involve trips to Venus or Mars, these six books are a good start.

Classic

In How to Expand Love: Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships, His Holiness the Dalai Lama names seven steps you can take towards the experience of limitless love in all human relationships-not just romantic ones. All love, he says, begins and ends with the self. (A true "classic" from the Tibetan spiritual leader would be The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, but both books offer the core lessons of Buddhism.)

Fresh Choices by David Joachim and Rochelle Davis is much more than a mouth-watering collection of recipes. Chock full of inspiring interviews, useful bits of "Choice Advice" and cooking tips in the form of "Helping Hands," it's an incredibly informative fresh food primer. Fresh Choices is an invaluable introduction to learning about where our produce, meat, seafood and dairy comes from and what choices we can make for healthful food, even if organically raised food is out of reach financially or geographically. Author Joachim recently shared some of his thoughts on kids, food, farming, and even candy with LIME.

Some are born cooks, and some have cooking thrust upon ‘em. My father falls into the latter category; recently widowed, he's fending for himself in the kitchen for the first time in, oh, about 80 years.

So I've been searching for a cookbook that covers the basics and offers simple, satisfying recipes for the novice cook. I nearly gave up after looking at a number of cookbooks supposedly aimed at beginners; either the book assumed the user knew more than a true newbie like my dad, or the recipes were too elaborate and exotic for my father's plain palate.

Canyon Ranch spa's celebrity clientele poses a particularly challenging conundrum for a chef; how do you cook for people who want to eat well without looking well-fed? Judging from the recipes in Canyon Ranch Cooks, the trick is to emphasize vegetables, fruits, and grains, and plenty of protein from fish, soy, poultry, low fat dairy and beans. But the Canyon Ranch chefs make room for a little red meat, too, with recipes for lamb, beef, and veal. Some recipes use a bit of butter. And there are even desserts without so much as a dash of deprivation.

Homo, homo on the range, where the queer and androgynous play…

No, I’m not referring to “Brokeback Mountain,” I’m talking about Ted Allen, the man who mans the stove on Bravo’s “Queer Eye For the Straight Guy.” Allen’s come out with his first cookbook, “The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes.”

What's the number one food magazine in America? I'll give you a hint: it's not Gourmet, Bon Appétit, or Saveur. You can't buy it on the newsstands, and most urbanites have never even heard of it.