Paperback and ebook available everywhere
Flow in the Kitchen:
Practices for Healthy
Stress-Free Vegan Cooking
“What’s for dinner?” is a question that induces annoyance, resentment, and even dread in many of us. It’s time to change the narrative. Cooking really good food for ourselves and others is the ultimate opportunity to nourish our bodies and souls, and those of our loved ones. When we are well fed, we can show up in our daily lives with more love and energy, ready to make the world a better place. Isn’t that worth putting a little effort toward? Yes! And we don’t need to be martyrs about it.
In Flow in the Kitchen: Practices for Healthy Stress-free Vegan Cooking, Brigitte Gemme invites home cooks like you to practice habits and routines that will transform cooking from a chore you dread to a ritual you embrace with gratitude and mindfulness. In addition to meal planning and batch cooking, Flow in the Kitchen leads you to adopt a new food and cooking mindset.
This short book guides you to:
- Shift your mindset to experience gratitude and empowerment when cooking,
- Strike a conscious compromise between our many values, requirements, and obligations,
- Compose healthy balanced vegan meals using mostly whole plant foods: lots of seasonal vegetables and fruit, satisfying protein-dense foods, whole grains, and healthy fats,
- Quickly plan meals for your week, realistically taking into consideration the time and energy you can put toward cooking,
- Commit to streamlined batch cooking sessions on the weekend to set yourself up for stress-free weeknight success,
- Roll with the punches and still get a good meal when your prep didn’t happen or the week doesn’t go as planned,
- And keep the flow going from one week to the next so you can continue feeding yourself and your loved ones really good meals… and hop back on the meal plan and prep train after you fall off.
In the book’s Part Two: Understanding Healthy Vegan Cooking, Brigitte shares her list of most useful pantry ingredients, her go-to vegetables (and what to do with them!), and the explanations you need to learn how to cook the most common standard vegan dishes using the ingredients you have at hand, without always scrambling to find a recipe.
Flow in the Kitchen is not only about cooking but rather about the complete process from thinking about food, planning meals, batch cooking, and finally assembling and serving dinner… before starting the flow process again for the following week. Cooking is one of those steps, but it is not the most important if our goal is to enjoy flow and be nourished. Feeling at ease and comfortable – not straining – in the kitchen depends on the quality of our presence as we plan, prepare, and serve our meals. The practice does not have to take much time, but it does deserve our full attention for a few hours every week.
Are you in?
Just one of the glowing reviews from Amazon
“This book is chock full of simple, thoughtful guidance to help people inhabit their kitchens and become great cooks. Rather than load people up with lifestyle photos and fancy recipes, it offers clear, practical guidance that can be useful for anyone. Great book.”
About the author
Brigitte Gemme is passionate about helping more people eat more plants, even if they think they will never go vegan. She used to love rare steak and blue cheese, but became vegan in 2015 to reduce her environmental footprint. Today, she is most motivated by the possibility of improving people’s health and vitality by empowering them to cook really good food. She offers meal planning services, online cooking workshops, and a cooking club on her web site Vegan Family Kitchen. Brigitte has a PhD in sociology of education from the University of British Columbia and a certificate in Plant-based Nutrition from the University of Winchester. She lives in Vancouver (Canada) with her husband and two children.
Where to buy the book
You can walk into your local bookstore and order the paperback version of the book. Ask for ISBN 978-1-7387018-1-0. If it’s not in their catalogue yet, it will be soon. Some great places to shop include The Strand in New York City, Powell’s in Portland, Book Passage in San Francisco, Vroman’s Bookstore in Southern California, The King’s English Bookstore in Salt Lake City, Argo Bookshop in Montreal, and all Black Bond Books/Book Warehouse locations in Vancouver. Australians may want to shop at Booktopia or Angus & Robertson. The paperback version is also available from Bookshop.org and IndieBound.org.
Canadians can order online from Vegan Supply.
You can also order the ebook or paperback from: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.au, Amazon.de, Amazon.es, Amazon.fr, Amazon.jp, and all the other Amazons, in addition to Barnes & Noble.
The ebook is also available on Kobo and Apple Books.
Praise for Flow in the Kitchen
“I will never say “I hate cooking!” again. I thought I needed a meal delivery service when really I needed this book. Finding Flow in the Kitchen has been a surprise, a relief and a delight.”
- Oonagh Duncan, fitness expert
Author of Healthy as F*ck [Ditch the Diet]
fitfeelsgood.com
“Have you lost your passion for the kitchen? Want to make healthy and delicious meals that are ethical and environmentally friendly, but you can’t muster the time or energy? Flow in the Kitchen can help. This intelligent, sensitive and informative book will reinvigorate your love of cooking real foods. Bringing mindful meal planning into your home will make the time you spend in the kitchen a joy.”
- Pamela Fergusson, Ph.D., Registered Dietitian
Author of Going Vegan for Beginners
pamelafergusson.com
“Flow in the Kitchen makes cooking as easy as sweeping! Even the most advanced cooks will find tips for cooking mindfully and efficiently.”
- Élise Desaulniers, author of Cash Cow: Ten Myths About the Dairy Industry
Co-author of Tables véganes, winner of a Taste Canada Gold Award
“Brigitte has created the perfect guide to support your transition to a healthy, kind and compassionate way of eating and living. The book shows you how a vegan diet does not have to be complicated or burdensome, but rather it is nutritious, healthy, tasty, fun and achievable. I highly recommend this book as your companion to a healthy plant-based way of living.”
- Shireen Kassam, Founder of Plant-Based Health Professionals UK
Author of Eating Plant-Based: Scientific Answers to Your Nutrition Questions
shireenkassam.medium.com
“Cooking can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. Flow In the Kitchen shares an enlightened approach to plant-based food preparation that will benefit anyone that wants to eat healthier. Let Brigitte guide you to cook more easily – and joyfully!”
- Dreena Burton
Author of Dreena’s Kind Kitchen and Plant-Powered Families
dreenaburton.com
“Flow in the Kitchen is not a cookbook, and that’s a good thing. It delivers what we truly need – a practical path to cooking “real good food” made from plants, and staying the course. When you’re flowing, you no longer dread cooking, routinely cook without your phone, and set yourself up for success every week. Brigitte shows us the path to flow and holds our hand every step of the way with candor, compassion, and humour.”
- Chana Davis, PhD
Creator of Fueled by Science
Host of the Get Real Health podcast
fueledbyscience.com
“Flow in the Kitchen is a wonderful resource for finding joy in vegan cooking, has actionable tips and explores mindset, which I’ve never seen in a book about cooking!”
- Jenny Lee, MD
Lifestyle Medicine Physician and Wellness Coach
jlwellness.org
“This book will be a must-have for anyone looking to make the jump to plant-based cooking. It’s a comprehensive look at not only what to cook, but the “how” behind, it without giving up your life.”
- Amanda Spackman, registered dietitian
Host of the Planned, Prepped, and Productive Podcast
callmebetty.com
“Flow in the Kitchen has completely changed my attitude, and therefore my results, in the kitchen! I used to be a lousy cook and resented having to do it. Yet this book helped me not only understand why I hated cooking, but also helped me change my mindset about it. I actually enjoy cooking now. I love nourishing myself and my family and prefer my own food to restaurant food! And although I initially scoffed at the idea that I may not need recipes or that I might know more than I think about plant-based cooking, she’s right! With her guidance, I’m learning to “take off the training wheels” and become more experimental. I don’t need to rely on recipes quite as much as I used to. I continue to gain confidence and joy in the kitchen and I cannot recommend this book enough!”
- Marian Erikson, host of the Plant Based Briefing Podcast
plantbasedbriefing.com
“To say that Flow in the Kitchen is not a cookbook is an understatement: it is a well thought out book that delivers much more than cooking. It’s a not a light read, rather “meaty” (or veggie), that requires thought. It delivers on the goal of getting you to step into the kitchen and add joy to your vegan food. Even though the author and I disagree on cooking grains in the Instant Pot, this book is true vegan food for thought. I highly recommend taking the time to read this vegan and life manifesto to get to the heart of understanding flow in the kitchen, and beyond.”
- Jill Nussinow, The Veggie Queen, nutritionist, and culinary educator
Author of Vegan Under Pressure and other cookbooks
theveggiequeen.com
“What a delightful and absolutely fabulous book for anyone wanting to eat more plant-based or rethinking their vegan cooking approach! This book will empower, inspire, and motivate you to become the best you can in creating exciting vegan dishes! Dig right in!”
- Patricia Tallman, PhD
Author of The Restore-Our-Planet Diet: Food Choices, Our Environment, and Our Health
“Brigitte has solved the problem of sustainable cooking habits by laying out a system to change your narrative and relationship with preparing healthy food with interest, joy, and calm.”
- Maša and Michael Ofei, creators of Heartful Table
Authors of The Minimalist Vegan
heartfultable.com