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Steaming is probably the healthiest way to cook your vegetables, if you have a perforated pot that fits over a normal one, you can get some water boiling in the pot, put your veggies in perforated pot over (but not in) the water, cover it and let them steam until they are tender, but not mushy. The basic rule is, the less direct exposure to a heat source, the better.
Use brown rice. It takes a little longer to cook, but the reason that white rice is white is because it's basically had most of its nutritional value processed away. Whole wheat pasta is great too, much higher fibre content than regular pasta.
Speaking of pasta, if you use ground beef for spaghetti sauce, consider using something like 1/3 ground beef and 2/3 Textured Vegetable Protein. TVP is sold in a dry, cat-litter like form. You have to soak it in hot water for awhile before you use it. Although it apparently comes in different flavours, I just use plain, relying on the smaller amount of real beef to give the sauce flavour, while the TVP gives protein and fibre without adding any fat.
You can sneak wheat germ into just about anything to give you extra fibre as well. You won't taste a thing, I promise.
A couple of general rules for healthy cooking are, use meat, but only as an accent to the dish, the vegetables and the seasonings should provide most of the flavour. Eat a wide variety of foods from all 4 food groups, but you probably knew that. Try to avoid canned products, they're loaded with sodium.
I can't provide you with any specific recipies or books, but if you go out looking for cookbooks, keep away from anything that says 'diet' on the cover. They're just looking to make money. Take a look at a Mediterranean cookbook, Mediterranean cooking uses a few of the principles I've mentioned, and they live pretty long lives over there.
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