Zen cooking for the person who doesn’t like cooking

“I want to eat healthfully, but what do I do if it stresses me out?”

Kaki Okumura
4 min readNov 3, 2022

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Let’s face it– even if you love cooking, sometimes cooking is a chore. After working for 8 hours, the last thing we want to do is be on our feet, sweaty, and then think about having to do the dishes afterwards.

This is why I’ve adopted Zen principles to my cooking philosophy. A major tenet of Zen is on letting go of what generates stress and to instead bring in elements that make us feel at peace. A part of this is building a natural flow to our thoughts and actions, and priming ourselves for a calm mindset, working within the guidelines of simplicity.

So instead of trudging through the drudgery of cooking for yourself, here are some tips on how to make it a more pleasant and sustainable daily habit.

3 cooking tips for the person who is too tired to cook

1. “When you’re hungry, no matter how ‘easy’ something is to cook, it takes too long to make.”

Cooking when you’re stressed primes us for scarfing things down, feeling exhausted, and then hating the overall process. When we cook when we’re satiated, we’re much more…

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Kaki Okumura

Born in Dallas, raised in New York and Tokyo. I care about helping others learn to live a better, healthier life. My site: www.kakikata.space 🌱