Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

"...vegan is what I was meant to be."

"My hope is that we can navigate through this world and our lives with the grace and integrity of those who need our protection. May we have the sense of humor and liveliness of the goats; may we have the maternal instincts and protective nature of the hens and the sassiness of the roosters. May we have the gentleness and strength of the cattle, and the wisdom, humility, and serenity of the donkeys. May we appreciate the need for community as do the sheep show more and choose our companions as carefully as do the rabbits. May we have the faithfulness and commitment to family as the geese, and adaptability and affability of the ducks. May we have the intelligence, loyalty, and affection of the pigs and the inquisitiveness, sensitivity, and playfulness of the turkeys.

"My hope is that we learn from the animals what it is we need to become better people."

With no fewer than four cookbooks under her belt - The 30-Day Vegan Challenge, The Vegan Table, Color Me Vegan, and The Joy of Vegan Baking, which is destined to become a classic - many of you may know Colleen Patrick-Goudreau as an accomplished vegan chef. But she's also got a master's degree in English Literature, which she puts to use as a writer and public speaker, educating the public about compassionate living and animal rights. Her exploration of the intersections between human and animal exploitation, both on the Food for Thought podcast and various short videos released on YouTube, are among my favorites.

In Vegan's Daily Companion, the self-described Joyful Vegan brings all her talents and avenues of interest together to create a book as unique as it is informative. Part cookbook, part self-help book, part pop culture guide, Vegan's Daily Companion offers 365 days of inspiration, knowledge, and celebration to vegans, both new and experienced. From Monday through Sunday (with the weekends sharing a recipe), each day you'll find a short discussion or series of tips, each tailored to a specific theme:

Monday / For the Love of Food - "A celebration of familiar as well as new foods to spark enthusiasm for eating healthfully."

Each Monday, Patrick-Goudreau delves deep to reveal things you may not know about your favorite foods - and introduce you to some foods you might have written off completely. For example, Day 99 includes some handy tips for cooking beans from scratch (salt and acidic ingredients should be added last, since they hinder the cooking of the beans). And Day 57 gives you a handy chart for cooking grains.

Also, arugula is another name for rocket! All these years tagging rocket pizzas on fuck yeah vegan pizza, and I had no idea!

[Insert the more you know and shooting star gif here.]

Sometimes the featured food ties into a recipe featured on an adjacent weekend; more often times not. Either way, this intermediate cook found many of the tips quite handy.

Tuesday / Compassionate Communication - "Techniques and tactics for speaking on behalf of veganism effectively and compassionately."

Similar to Joan Dunayer's Animal Equality: Language and Liberation (call it the Cliff's Notes), Compassionate Communication explores the roots of popular terminology, offering alternatives to those promote animal exploitation, whether intentionally or not. While it's time to ditch animal-unfriendly phrases like "don't look a gift horse in the mouth," "let the cat out of the bag," and "fat pig" (in what is perhaps my favorite quote in the book, Patrick-Goudreau counters this insult thusly: "They’re not fat pigs; we’re mad scientists."), you might be surprised, as was I, at the seemingly harmful sayings that are either sympathetic to animal suffering ("an albatross around one's neck"), or have nothing at all to do with nonhuman animals ("more than one way to skin a cat").

Compassionate Communication also offers answers to the many inane questions vegans will inevitably face (If we stop eating animals, won't cows take over the world?; What about the bugs killed in crop production?; Why do you want plants to suffer?), as well as tips for responding to them honestly, with grace and humor.

Wednesday / Optimum Health for Body, Mind, and Spirit - "Care and maintenance for becoming and remaining a joyful vegan."

Wednesday is a bit of a mixed bag, spanning nutrition, burnout, and self-care. I especially love Patrick-Goudreau's tips for creating a gratitude list, finding peace in nature and solitude, and visiting animal sanctuaries as a sort of holy place.

Thursday / Animals in the Arts: Literature and Film - "Inspiration across the ages that reflects our consciousness of and relationship with nonhuman animals."

Here you'll find a remarkably diverse and extensive look at animal-friendly films, novels, poetry, and art. While I recognized a few titles (Plague Dogs chief among them), Patrick-Goudreau grew my reading list and Netflix queue in leaps and bounds. Books and films run the gamut, from poets William Cowper and Walt Whitman, to author-activist (and mother of Mary Shelley, also featured here) Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin, to the 1977 student film Killer of Sheep - and of course that one episode of The Twilight Zone ("To Serve Man").

Items high up on my radar include: Shad Clark's short story "Little Boy Pig," currently free for download on Amazon; a 1973 French science fiction film called The Savage Planet; James Agee's "A Mother's Tale"; the Italian film Umberto D.; and Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

However, be warned: since many of these works address cruelty towards animals, things can get rather depressing at times.

Friday / Stories of Hope, Rescue, and Transformation - "Heartening stories of people who have become awakened and animals who have found sanctuary."

Stories celebrates the deliverance of animals - both humans and non. Regular folks - like Itai in Tel Aviv, or Linda in San Fracisco - share their journeys to veganism in short essay format. Likewise, those who have cared for rescued animals - turkeys, burros, pigs, and chimpanzees - give voice to their exploitation, liberation, and (hopefully) eventual transformation. No doubt you'll recognize many of the sanctuaries and rescue groups that helped with this project: Animal Place, Rolling Dog Ranch, Farm Sanctuary, Animals Asia, Cleveland Armory Black Beauty Ranch, Performing Animal Welfare Society, and the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, to name a few.

The personal submissions introduce an interesting element to Vegan's Daily Companion, since the authors are occasionally guilty of partaking in behaviors that the author herself warns against. For instance, one contributor uses the word "nag" as a pejorative; a nag, of course, is one who complains a lot or makes excessive demands. A nag is also "an old, inferior, or worthless horse."

So, yeah. Perhaps the personal essays could have been vetted a little better? Or maybe I'm just biased, since I'd rather read about a cow over a person any day of the week. (I kid, but not really.)

Saturday + Sunday / Healthful Recipes - "Favorite recipes to use as activism and nourishment."

Saturday and Sunday share an entry, which is a recipe. Many are reprints from Patrick-Goudreau's previous cookbooks - The Vegan Table, Color Me Vegan, and The Joy of Vegan Baking - so if you already own one or all three, you might be a little disappointed. But there are also a few friend/follower contributions in the mix, including a Lentil Bolognese dish I just loved.

So far I've also tried the Cream of Mushroom Soup, courtesy of Compassionate Cooks member Melissa Phillips.

This was my first time drinking mushrooms in a semi-liquid form, and I was not entirely fond of the experience. My husband was a big fan though.

The recipes are all over the place: salads, entrees, desserts, snacks, and breakfasts - all get a little face time.

I kind of like that Saturday and Sunday share a recipe; if you read this book chronologically and in time, two days should give you plenty of time to shop for and master a recipe. And if you commit to working through the entirety of Vegan's Daily Companion - recipes included, no matter what they may be - the project just might challenge you to try new foods and dishes that you might not otherwise.

(Me? I'm too impatient to read a page a day. I usually read a week or two per sitting.)

On the downside, I kind of wish there was a dedicated recipe index for easy skimming. Recipes are listed by title and ingredients in the main index, but one big, separate list would be even handier.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Vegan's Daily Companion. While I could do without some of the New Age woo-woo (manifesting - that's similar to The Secret, right?), Patrick-Goudreau thankfully keeps it to a minimum. As a longtime vegan, I still learned quite a bit - especially when it comes to tips and tricks for preparing various foods. I especially enjoyed Patrick-Goudreau's knowledge of popular culture, and the many lovely animal rescue stories.

I'd say that Vegan's Daily Companion would make the perfect gift for a vegan friend who's feeling down or at risk of experiencing burnout, except that it's not entirely free of scenes of animal cruelty and abuse. The "Animals in the Arts" section in particular comes with a trigger warning. That said, it's still a wonderful inspirational/how-to guide for newbie and old timer vegans alike.

Buy it with: The Daily Vegan: A Guided Journal, adapted from Vegan’s Daily Companion, and/or one of the author's vegan cookbooks, for a shiny little gift set.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/05/08/vegans-daily-companion-by-colleen-patrick-g... show less

A Guided Journal for Joyful (and Occasionally Not!) Vegans

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

Journaling can help you to organize your thoughts, sort through powerful emotions, even relieve stress and anxiety. Specialty journals run the gamut, from question-a-day mini-journals to those started - but never finished - by your favorite Amazon princess. (Eep, how cool is that?)

In this vein, The Daily Vegan is a (semi-)guided show more journal for vegans. Based on Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Vegan's Daily Companion - which features 365 days of vegan inspiration, trivia, recipes, cooking tips, rescue stories, and more - and featuring artwork by Dayna Safferstein, The Daily Vegan offers vegans a safe and compassionate space to share their innermost thoughts and feelings. The journal includes a nice balance of writing prompts and blank pages for more free form journaling, and the drawings and quotations help set the mood.

As you might expect, the prompts are written with vegans in mind: activism, nutrition, compassion, burnout, and gratitude are just a few of the issues addressed. If you're read Vegan's Daily Companion, you might recognize some of the topics from the "Optimum Health" and "Compassionate Communication" sections. Should you find yourself stuck and not knowing what to write about, the prompts can help to nudge you in the right direction.

The Daily Vegan also includes multiple pages without prompts, for more impromptu, free form, or creative writing.

Safferstein's artwork is really quite lovely and charming; I'm especially enamored of her animal drawings: deers, turkeys, rabbits, sheep, horses, dogs, chickens, and cats. The line art is understated enough that it doesn't detract from your own contributions, yet still provides an elegant backdrop. Additionally, many of the full-page drawings include enough negative space that you could easily add to the picture - if you're artistically inclined - or use it to highlight a favorite photo or piece of ephemera.

At 7 by 9.25 inches, The Daily Vegan is large enough to write in comfortably, but still compact enough that it never feels unwieldy. (It's the same size as Vegan's Daily Companion, and the two look quite handsome together!) There's a generous amount of space for writing, with lines that are at least college ruled in height. The matte pages aren't as attractive as they might be with a glossy finish - but there's also less likelihood that the ink will smear or smudge. You can complete the journal in order or skip around - it's totally up to you!

The only downside for me is that many of the pages include an "On Your Table" feature (analogous, I think, to Monday's "For the Love of Food" column in Vegan's Daily Companion), basically just a food tip or fact, that seems a little out of place in a journal. I'd rather have more writing prompts.

Then again, we vegans can be a tad obsessive when it comes to food, so maybe it's just me. These pages might be a nice place to record your favorite vegan comfort food recipes, or perhaps veganize old family favorites. This way, there's little danger of losing or misplacing them. And there's that old maxim about food feeding the soul!

http://www.easyvegan.info/2015/03/24/the-daily-vegan-a-guided-journal/ show less

recommended for: EVERYONE who bakes or wants others to bake for them

I generally read my cookbooks from cover to cover, but I picked up this one for an initial cursory look only and couldn’t put it down and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting.

Not hyperbole: This is an amazing and remarkable baking book, for experienced bakers and novices alike. This cookbook has everything needed to successfully create delicious baked goods. It’s also a beautiful book, containing many show more mouthwatering photos of the completed recipes.

Great vegan book too. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is a true hostess and nurturer. She gives her vegan story concisely and not with a hitting others over the head style, but effectively. Various vegan/animal facts tips are interspersed throughout the book. Good short explanation of why we REALLY don’t need cow’s milk. (And the fact is, the flavor of vegan baked goods is undetectable from those baked goods that use animal products.)

And the cookbooks I love the most have delicious recipes, of course, but I usually like the ones with humor also; this isn’t a funny book, but it is incredibly informational. Most recipes have extra information: a Compassionate Cooks’ Tip and/or a Did You Know and/or a short section on Food Lore (history of a food in a particular recipe), all of which I found so interesting. I’ve never seen a baking/cookbook with better instructions for having a positive experience making the recipes. The Appendixes are truly amazing and especially helpful for someone like me who doesn’t always know what baking terms mean.

Great Defending Desserts section taking up 2 pages of the book, about how desserts are for treats, not for every meal eating, and so when making them one doesn't need to use healthier ingredients. (I usually do prefer whole wheat pastry flour to white flour though.)

from the book’s table of contents:

The Whys and Wherefores of Choosing Vegan
The How-to’s and What-nots of Vegan Baking

the recipes:

Muffins, Biscuits, and Scones
Savory Quick Breads
Cakes and Cupcakes
Pies and Tarts
Brownies and Bars
Crumbles, Cobblers, Crisps, and Whole Fruit Desserts
Strudel, Crepes, Blintzes, and Pastries
Yeast Breads and Rolls
Mousses and Puddings
Confections and Candy
Sorbets, Shakes, and Smoothies
Crusts for Pies and Tarts
Hot and Cold Beverages
Frostings, Sauces, Syrups, and Spreads

from the appendixes:
Baking Staples Ingredients
Essential Kitchen Tools
Resources and Recommendations
Glossary of Terms (these are cooking terms)
Cake Pan Substitutes
Common Ingredients Yields and Equivalents
Baking Soda and Baking Powder What’s the Difference?
Suggested Reading
Suggested Viewing

Her index of recipes has 3 parts: a general index that includes all of the recipes, and then a Seasonal recipe index (winter, spring, summer, fall), and a Celebrations and Occasions index (Holiday - including food gifts, Breakfast & Brunch, Tea Party, Children’s Birthday Party.) show less

I was in need of some motivation so browsed the offerings in the "included" area of Audible for health and diet. I tried two other books before this one grabbed me.

I hadn't heard of the author before but she's got a popular blog and is the author of several books. I can't say that I'm motivated enough to seek out more from her but I did enjoy and get a lot out of The Joyful Vegan. Mostly I enjoyed her compassionate approach to other humans. She spends a lot of time discussing how vegans are show more perceived and how being joyful instead of angry is the way to go. That spoke to me because I struggle in my personal life to not be angry and to be compassionate. Joyful isn't something I achieve on a regular basis but not angry is within my reach. I'll work on joyful though.

I definitely recommend this book to vegans and non-vegans alike. Who couldn't use more joy in their life? show less