My name is Gallagher Goodland. I live in Southern California now, but I spent half my life near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney disease in 2018. I was co-running a company at the time, putting in long hours, and I told myself treatment could wait. It couldn't. I ended up in the ER, and I woke up attached to a machine. I've been on dialysis ever since — hemodialysis first, then peritoneal dialysis at home starting in 2022. Along the way: peritonitis three times, a blood infection once, and one weekend I lost entirely, waking up in a hospital bed not knowing my own name until my wife walked in.

I wrote this cookbook because the food options we get with kidney disease are miserable, and I wasn't willing to spend the rest of my life eating that way.

We deserve a little pleasure. That's the whole idea.