Just claim to be Spanish
In is joked that in Spain, bacon is a vegetable as you'll often find bacon in the "vegetarian" bean soup. For some to cook without it, is like me telling them not to use oil. It is a kitchen staple.
Despite having more cookbooks than most people have books in their house, I still find that I rely most on my Moosewood and Horn of the Moon books. I like food with a lot of flavor and some cookbooks are just too bland for me even after doubling or tripling the herbs and spices.
I dabble in the kitchen and make soups for lunches, but DH is the chef in the house. He spends a lot of time perfecting recipes (me, I toss stuff together and if it is good, I'm happy, but I know I'll never get it right again). He tends to spend a lot of time surfing the web and combining recipes. So, no one good source.
He'll also adapt meat recipes. There was a cooking school show on the Food Channel and the students were taught Chocolate Chicken. It was a baked dish and he adapted it using seitan (mmmm). Another show had a pepper encrusted something with a flavorful brandy-based sauce. Turns out you can pepper encrust tofu and it tastes pretty good.
As long as the recipe is not a simply cooked meat, if it sounds good, adapt it.