The ability to provide imaginative and appetizing meals can be instrumental in determining both the quality and quantity of the dialysis patient's life. When I started being dialyzed some twenty-plus years ago, a major contributor to a deep depression which  I was then suffering, revolved around the fact that my diet was so limited that eating held no joy for me at all. I am sure that I made my family and other people around me unduly miserable because of the issue of the renal diet. Without meaning to, I succeeded in making the entire household feel guilty because of my problems with food. At this point I became locked into a pattern of eating for safety rather than for taste. The diet was extremely bland and unattractive consisting primarily of unseasoned, boiled noodles or rice, a green vegetable, and for desert, a small bowl containing two wilted cling peach halves. The diet quite frankly had me at wits end. The author of this book rescues us from such a fate, for she provides both imaginative and tasty meals, while at the same time safeguarding the dialysis patient's health. If one considers the many physical and mental aberrations one can suffer due to an extended period of poor nutrition, the author can be considered an holistic health care protector of the highest order. If there is any credence to the old cliche, "You are what you eat", then the author has gone a long way toward making dialysis patients rational, happy human beings again.

Anthony V. Nicholson Ph.D., C.S.S.C.