If you only buy one weight-loss book this year...well, you know the rest.

​I was prepared to dislike Chubster the moment it landed on my desk. A hipster's guide to losing weight? While staying cool? Oh, fer Christ's sake. Hipsters -- like bacon -- are everywhere these days.

Diet books are everywhere these days, too. 'Tis the season for New Year's resolutions and fatties everywhere to attempt to lose some of those holiday pounds we put on watching old Firefly episodes with a leftover, spiral-sliced honey-glazed ham for company.

I get a lot of diet and weight-loss books across my desk this time of year for these reasons, like The Drunk Diet: How I Lost 40 Pounds...Wasted, written by Lady Gaga's boyfriend. (I cannot make this up.) I read a few pages of it before passing it along to our resident Lady Gaga-and-whiskey connoisseur Craig Hlavaty, who's been scanning it in hopes of gleaning any stray Gaga tidbits to add to his collection.

But what struck me about both books was that neither want you to change who you are in order to get healthier and lose weight.

In Chubster, written by former Phoenix New Times music editor and unabashed hipster (although he hates that word) Martin Cizmar, he jokingly prods at his own kind -- the record store snobs, the Mac fanboys -- while admitting that it's okay to be who you are. And that the real secret to successful, long-term weight loss is taking that into account.

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Houston is the only Texas city recognized by the magazine in its top 10 list.

​Southern Living's senior travel editor Paula Disbrowe knows Texas.

The chef and food writer will be celebrating her 10th year of living in the Lone Star State this coming January, and was happy to report that a Texas city made it onto Southern Living's recently released list of the Top 10 Tastiest Cities in the South.

Houston is recognized in the magazine's January issue, alongside heavy hitters like New Orleans and Charleston, and Disbrowe sounded a bit like a proud parent when discussing its inclusion over the phone earlier this week.

"It's such a pleasure writing about and celebrating what has become such a vital part of my DNA," she said from her home in Austin. In addition to raising her two children in Texas, she said, 'it's the way I eat and cook now."

While some Texans may not traditionally consider their state in the "South," Disbrowe cited the fact that "Texas is such a confluence of cuisines" between Southern, Cajun, Mexican and Southwestern influences -- something that's also reflected in Houston itself.

Our city was chosen for inclusion on Southern Living's list in part because of its diverse ethnic food scene, but also for our "sizzling Lower Westheimer 'hood and new generation of tastemakers," according to the magazine, which is on newsstands starting this Friday.

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​This is neither a list of the all-time best cookbooks of the year, nor is it a list of the best Texan cookbooks of the year. It's a combination of both. Because odds are that if you're giving a cookbook as a gift this year, it's either going to be to a fellow Texan or because you're a Texan looking to spread the gospel of our own great cooking.

So this list has a little something for everyone on it: Texans, non-Texans and everyone in between (that's you, Oklahoma).

10. Green Beans & Guacamole

Like another book coming up on this list, Green Beans & Guacamole is just as perfect for the coffee table as the kitchen. Beautiful photos from some of the city's best food photographers -- Shannon O'Hara, Debora Smail and Julie Soefer -- are featured alongside recipes from its favorite chefs. Look for Jamie Zelko, Mark Cox, Philippe Schmit, John Sheely, Richard Knight and Soren Pedersen among others. As an added bonus, 100 percent of the proceeds from every cookbook purchased go to benefit The Arc, an organization dedicated to helping people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

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Available now!

​"This city is a Texas-size melting pot for flavors and cuisine from around the world, all served with a side of Southern hospitality," writes Taste of the South of Houston.

The bi-monthly cooking magazine devoted a colorful nine-page spread to our city in its December-January issue, and those are their words about Houston.

The rest of the words, however, are mine. Taste of the South, based in Birmingham, Alabama, contacted me in August about writing a feature on our city's up-and-coming dining scene. I gladly obliged, and the magazine -- which is distributed, as you might have guessed, throughout the South -- is on newsstands now.

The spread on Houston covers the gamut of influences, cultures and cuisines that all converge in our city, starting with -- what else? -- barbecue and Mexican food. Also represented are both fine dining and ultra-laid-back establishments, both Indian and Vietnamese restaurants, both indoor and outdoor grocery stores and both traditional and modern Tex-Mex.

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​Lucky Peach is the new food magazine from the cool kids at McSweeney's, part Gourmet for hipsters and part zine. It's not always appetizing -- the latest [and only the magazine's second] issue features a five-page spread of rotting food transforming into nightmarish new foods -- but it's been interesting so far.

This latest issue delves into more than just drawings of decomposing fruit; it's a guide, of sorts, to the "sweet spot" of various foodstuffs. There's an illustrated guide to leaving things in your refrigerator until ripe, an incredibly detailed recipe for creating the perfect, multi-layered Arnold Palmer cake, and a photo spread of dealing a death blow to a striped bass at that ideal moment: the ike jime process in action, or the Japanese art of killing fish.

Unlike our stories on ike jime -- which focused on Gulf-caught fish like red snapper -- the Lucky Peach story shows the death of a Long Island striped bass. Of course, the techniques demonstrated in Lucky Peach are different from the ones that we highlighted (see our cover story from August: "The Fish That Got Away"), but that's just ike jime: There's no one "right way" to kill every fish.

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​It's definitely too early to start putting up Christmas decorations, but it's not too early to start stocking up on presents for the holidays. And although this may just be me, a signed book is always a fantastic gift to open up on Christmas Day or after singing Ma'oz Tzur or however your family rolls during the winter festivities.

This week, there are four different book signings from four very different authors to choose from, starting tonight:

Erin Hicks Miller will be signing copies of her new book, Houston Classic Seafood, on Wednesday, November 9, at Danton's. It's the third in Miller's series on Houston classics, after Houston Classic Mexican Recipes and Houston Classic Desserts. The signing will take place from 5 to 8 p.m., and will feature happy hour pricing from Danton's bar.

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Jalapeños are a popular Frito pie topping in Texas...if you're not a weenie.

​There I was in Half-Price Books this weekend, poring over the alarmingly titled 500 Things To Eat Before It's Too Late (fearmongering listicles: they're not just for food blogs), when I saw it: a section on our beloved Frito pie. Was the Frito pie endangered?! I had to know.

After reading the small section, I came to find that the "endangered" status of the Frito pie was the least of my concerns.

"We feel it is time for Santa Fe to stop pretending that the Frito pie was created there," wrote Joyce Saenz Harris in the Dallas Morning News. "Historically and culturally, Texas owns this dish, baby."

Okay, so far so good. But what's this about Santa Fe?

Joyce's assertion notwithstanding, most culinary historians do believe that the Frito pie was invented in Santa Fe at the lunch counter of the old Woolworth's, which has become the Five & Dime General Store, at the corner of the plaza. Teresa Hernandez, who came to Santa Fe from Madrid, New Mexico, about 60 years ago told us she had always enjoyed the way local drive-ins served the chili in a paper cup on a bed of shredded lettuce, garnished with a handful of Frito chips.

That's right, folks. A freaking bed of shredded lettuce. Not only was the Frito pie supposedly created in Santa Fe, they didn't even do it right. Get a rope.

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​Yes, you read that right: Marfreless, the legendary sign-less make-out bar in River Oaks, is partly behind a book from two Houston locals on how to make your next party the talk of the town. Or at least the subdivision.

Mike Riccetti, a longtime Houston food fixture who writes for the Examiner and is the author of Houston Dining on the Cheap, authored the book along with Marfreless's general manager and veteran industry man Michael Wells. It's called The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining: Tips from Marfreless, and it's now available electronically and updated for 2011.

Previously, The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining had only been available in paperback for a $17.95 price tag. But the new e-book version is only $9.99, and it's compatible with every reader from Nooks to Kindles, and from iPads to Androids.

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Churning and churning in the widening gyre. . .wait, that's not right.

​You guys need to seriously up your game. Yeah, I know I haven't written one of these since the end of June, but that doesn't let you off the hook for not providing me with any suggestions last time. I'm getting the impression you don't think much of the leftovers pieces. Too bad.

Seriously, though, I had to go all the way back to the beginning to track down this week's suggestion, since The Hat merely provided a reference to it. Our very own Katharine Shilcutt has been practically begging me to make this ice cream, dropping it into the comments section repeatedly. Her diligence finally paid off, and I was the beneficiary.

I'm typically not terribly big on sweets. Give me the choice between chocolate or a cheeseburger, and the burger wins, hands down, at least 90 percent of the time. I've always been that way. Even when I'm craving dessert, I tend to steer toward the more temperate zone on the cart, rather than rushing headlong into hyperglycemia. You might find it odd, then, that I was so excited about making David Lebovitz's Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream.

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Cupcake Lasagna: you asked for this, people

​It's my fault, clearly. I didn't lay out any ground rules. I set myself up, and (one of) you took the bait. Still, I was a bit shocked when I wound up preparing cupcake lasagna for this week's A Page Outta.

I knew it was at least mostly intended as a joke, but I had already decided to pick randomly from the suggestions. When I told her what I had drawn, my wife suggested I toss it and draw again. No dice; random is random. If I start the game breaking the rules, why bother having them at all?

Resigned, I started doing some research on these fabled fusion cakes from hell. There were several options to choose from, each as pointlessly silly as the next. I decided that, in the name of fairness, I should go with the one that popped up first in a Google search. Since I technically searched for "cupcake lasagna" instead of "lasagna cupcakes," I wound up with a recipe from the Food Network, courtesy of Dweezil Zappa and Lisa Loeb. Not only would I be preparing something utterly ridiculous for my first reader-requested post, I'd be taking my cues from two (very) marginally notable musicians. Yay.

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