Many of you have asked for diets tailored specifically to IgAN patients. There aren't any, but it doesn't matter. Lots of good vegetarian cookbooks out there fill the bill very nicely, and once you understand the principles of vegetarian cooking, almost any main dish can be transformed into a meatless -- but delicious -- variant.

Cooking is a very personal matter. Who is going to use a cookbook unless the recipes work and suit the family's tastes? We suggest you borrow books from your library, or browse the bookstores to find cookbooks that appeal to you. Try, however, to avoid cookbooks that depend heavily on using milk or cheese. The following are some of the best, according to Vegetarian Times:

• The New Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Brian Ruppenthal (Ten Speed Press, 1986).
• Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen (Ten Speed Press, 1992).
• Horn of the Moon Cookbook by Ginny Callan (Harper & Row, 1987).
• Ten Talents by Rosalie Hurd (Dr. & Mrs. Frank Hurd, 1985).
• The Vegetarian Feast by Martha Rose Shulman (Harper & Row, 1979).

• Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Yamuna Devi (Bala, 1987).
• World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey (Alfred A. Knopf, 1981).
• Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant by the Moosewood Collective (Simon & Schuster, 1990).
• Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking by Julie Sahni (William Morrow, 1985).
• The Fragrant Vegetable: Simple Vegetarian Delicacies from the Chinese by Martin Stidham (Tarcher/St. Martin's Press, 1986)

Best Vegan [using no animal products at all] Cookbooks:

• The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook (Book Publishing Co., 1978).
• The Now and Zen Epicure by Miyoko Nishimoto (Book Publishing Co., 1991).
• Friendly Foods by Ron Pickarski (Ten Speed Press, 1991).
• Recipes from An Ecological Kitchen by Lorna Sass (William Morrow, 1992).
• Simply Vegan by Debra Wasserman (The Vegetarian Resource Group, 1991).

Best Overall Cookbooks:

• The New Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Brian Ruppenthal (Ten Speed Press, 1986).
• The Savory Way by Deborah Madison (Bantam, 1990).
• American Wholefoods Cuisine by Nikki and David Goldbeck (Plume/NAL and Ceres Press, 1983).
• Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin (Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).

• The Vegetarian Epicure, Books One or Two, by Anna Thomas (Alfred A. Knopf, 1972 and 1989).
• Vegetable Heaven, Mollie Katzen (Hyperion, 1997)
• Modern Thai Cuisine by Tommy Tang (Doubleday, 1991). (Not strictly vegetarian, but adaptable.)

[Adapted from Network News, No. 6 (April 1996)]