With the holiday season approaching, I thought I'd recommend a gift idea for anyone who loves food - even those who never enter a kitchen. I've described below three wonderful writers - any of their books would make great gifts. The three writers I've singled out - M.F.K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin, and Ruth Reichl- are all very different, both generationally and in personality, but they have in common a special knack of writing sensually about food.

M.F.K. Fisher, (1908-1992) earned praise as a writer well beyond culinary circles. W.H. Auden called her the best prose writer in America. A New Yorker reviewer of one of the books contained in The Art of Eating wrote, "M.F.K. Fisher writes about food as others do about love, only better". That comment still holds true today. She ultimately published 26 books, read any of them and you will be addicted.

Reading Fisher is like plunging into a cool pool on a hot day - sheer pleasure at being in a strange environment where the sensory is all encompassing, and where you are always kept slightly off balance. She writes in the first person so most of her writing has autobiographical elements, although clarifying details may or may not be present. But the miracle of Fisher is that, despite a life full of tragedies - two divorces, her second husband's suicide after years of chronic illness, her brothers and third husband's mental illnesses - you finish her books envious of her sheer joy in daily living.

She has an extraordinary ability to both become absorbed in and communicate the delight of daily experiences, most of which revolve around food, appetite, cooking, or sharing meals. There is also a trace of the exotic in Fisher, largely because a lot of her writings involve pre -WWII France. To start with Fisher, I would strongly encourage purchasing The Art of Eating, a collection of five of her shorter books.

Laurie Colwin, (1944 -1992), by contrast to Fisher, was primarily a fiction writer, having written five novels and short story collections by the time of her untimely death at 48. Her two food books, which were developed from articles written for Gourmet Magazine, are Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. These are autobiographical and you do learn a lot about her daily life, but she doesn't have Fishers dramatic life experiences.

What she does have is an opinionated, even feisty nature which is well tempered with an intelligence and warmth that would make any reader want her for a best friend. Of the three writers, I think she includes the best recipes, about which she is certainly passionate. To me she is exemplifies the best of cookbook writing - her recipes work, they require some competency but no significant technical skill in the cook, and she assumes that you are approaching the dish with the joyful anticipation of sharing great food with loved persons.

She is a totally unpretentious writer - the best description of her books is in her own introduction to More Home Cooking. "Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry; and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved." Colwin doesn't have Fishers sex appeal but rather the warmth of a perpetual hug. Even if you don't want to cook from her books, they're a joy to read.