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!

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 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 Part Two, Understanding Healthy Vegan Cooking, Brigitte explains in detailed yet simple terms how to make the most common healthy vegan dishes: stir-fries, salad and bowls, soups and stews, and even pizza! She describes the best ways to cook whole grains and beans, in addition to sharing her list of most useful pantry ingredients and go-to vegetables. You'll learn how to improvise from pantry ingredients and seasonal produce so you don't have to scramble to find a recipe again!

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 not the most important if our goal is to enjoy flow and be nourished. Feeling at ease and comfortable - not struggling - 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?

"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. Brigitte shows us the path to flow and holds our hand every step of the way with candor, compassion, and humor." - Chana Davis, PhD, creator of Fueled by Science.