Dear Flock,
Happy Wednesday! We are back in NYC, which is both wonderful and disorienting. We literally just got back, late last night, after spending some time with my family in NJ. Oh, speaking of which, back by popular demand, among the interviews on our podcast this weekend (Episode #157) will be my grandma (the one who is busy changing the world), who will talk about her own journey to realizing how horrible fur production is, and the effort she took to rid herself of her own furs. She’ll also chat about how her new life being wheelchair-bound makes her sympathize with confined farmed animals. It’s pretty moving, and Grandma is pretty incredible. I can’t wait for you to hear it. (We also have some other amazing interviews, including with the inspiring and talented folks behind Philadelphia’s game-changing restaurant, Vedge!)

Colleen, Mariann, me, and David (Colleen’s dapper beau)
I’d say we are slowly getting our lives back in order here in our tiny apartment, but the fact is, we’re not. #PRIVATE#There are boxes everywhere, and the only food we have in our kitchen is one lone container of oats in the corner of the dusty cabinet. Thank goodness we both love oats! (Worry not; I just placed a huge online grocery order, and I intend to make some kale chips in no time.)
One of the most exciting parts of the day for me today was the email exchange I had with my friend Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, whose work and disposition I deeply admire. She has graced our podcast twice so far (most recently on Episode 143), and in the past year or so, I’ve been lucky enough to have developed quite a special friendship with her. I can tell you, first-hand, that Colleen the Person is every bit as wonderful, generous, funny, and brilliant as Colleen the Vegan Queen (or, “Coll-Queen,” as I referred to her on our podcast recently).
That is about one of the ten thousand reasons why I am thrilled to extend an offer to you, our darling flock members, to enter to win a membership for you or a friend to Colleen’s life-changing program, The 30-Day Vegan Challenge. This thorough and gentle program, which is nonetheless thought-provoking and effective, is, hands down, the best tool ever created in order to foster veganism among those who are compassionately-inclined, but might need some additional assistance and support to jump on the vegan bandwagon. Colleen is as good as it gets, and the resources she provides are unsurpassed.
We all have vegan-wannabes in our lives, and especially now — right after the New Year — we each know folks who have resolved to go vegan, or perhaps to go “more” vegan. Let’s help them go full-throttle by giving them that extra push they might need.
To enter to win your chance to give yourself or someone you know Colleen’s The 30-Day Vegan Challenge, do two things: 1. Email contest [at] ourhenhouse [dot] org, and say you’d like to be entered to win The 30-Day Vegan Challenge, and 2. Share your favorite vegan resource with either your Facebook followers, your Twitter followers, or by good old-fashioned email. We’re going on the honor system with that one, folks — we just want you to commit to spreading the word. You can share a link to your favorite video, podcast, book, magazine, whatever — just as long as you do it, and as long as it speaks the truth about animals. A randomly selected winner will be chosen and notified on January 16, 2013, at midnight EST, so enter before then.
Sending love from the Big Apple (I like to think of it as a huge Granny Smith),
Jasmin
P.S. We have some pretty sweet exclusive flock discount codes in the work for y’all, so stay tuned…