10 Ways Cooking Can Make Your Life More Balanced
Posted on Balanced Mind and Soul, Balanced Nutrition | March 16, 2010 | 17 Comments
This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!
Image by Cooking is a very simple task that you perform every day without thinking much about it. Unless you are a professional cook you do not think about cooking as an essential part of balanced living. I did not think about it until recently.
The other day I was cooking my husband’s favorite dish – spaghetti with marinara sauce. It is a very basic recipe that is extremely easy, healthy and tasty at the same time. While I was cooking I realized that at that moment I was balancing my life. Cooking is an essential ritual for balanced living.
- Cooking develops creativity. Take a few basic ingredients and think how many different dishes you can fix. The possibilities are practically endless if you really think hard about it. You can use a cookbook at first when you are an inexperienced cook but later try to use your creativity to come up with new ideas for supper. If you train your mind this way then it will be easy for you to come up with interesting ideas in business or your everyday life.
- You put love into every meal. Think about your childhood and how your mom used to fix your favorite dish. Even if you order the same dish at the most expensive restaurant or try to follow the same recipe your mom’s creation will still taste a million times better. The difference is the love that she always puts into her cooking.
When you cook you can give your family the best tasting food and put your heart and love into every meal. Nothing is more pleasant than a smile on your child’s or your loved one’s face when they eat their favorite meal that you fixed for them. - Cooking is calming. You take everything one step at a time, you concentrate on the present moment of cooking, you do some monotonous activities (like chopping or stirring) that calm your body and mind. Cooking is like meditation because you can quiet your mind.
- Create delicious meals. Healthy and tasty food is an important part of balanced living. Humans are programmed to like foods that are not healthy (chocolate cake, ice-cream, chips, French fries) but when you cook yourself you can transform the unhealthy recipes into healthier versions. Instead of having French fries you can fix roasted potato wedges and instead of using a cake mix you can fix your own chocolate cake without gluten (if somebody in your family is allergic to it) or with half the fat. When you cook you can choose the best ingredients for yourself and for your family and avoid all the chemicals and trans fats that are commonly used in precooked meals.
- Cooking clears your mind. While you are chopping celery you are chopping off negative thoughts. You can feel new ideas and plans cooking up in your head. You can organize your thoughts and find solution to the problems you’ve been thinking about lately. I come up with half of my blog post ideas while I am cooking (the other half I get while running) so you can use cooking to come up with new ideas for your life.
- Cooking gives new experiences. If you want to break the routine (which you should do to feel in balance) then having a little adventure is always the best way to do that. You can have adventures in your kitchen almost every day that won’t cost any money (other than the cost of the ingredients of course) but will bring plenty of new emotions. Try new recipes, new cuisines, new ways of cooking, new tastes and feel the excitement of discovery.
- Cooking brings family together. If you are busy all week long and you do not get enough time to spend with your kids or your loved ones then you can have a great time cooking together. You’ll have enough time to do some catching up on the news in each other’s lives, you’ll laugh and talk together, and you’ll experience new things and learn to help each other. There is no better way to teach your kids about healthy eating than to invite them to a cooking party. They’ll be more willing to try new things (like green veggies that they do not normally like) and appreciate healthy foods.
You can also have a romantic cooking date with your partner. A few months ago my husband and I tried to fix our own sushi rolls. We had the best time in the kitchen together; it was a romantic date that was absolutely awesome. - Cooking lets you be alone. If you have kids then you can ask your spouse to take care of them and have some alone time while cooking. Even if you do not have kids you can still enjoy this time without any people around you. This is your time to reflect on your life and to enjoy silence.
- Cooking is a mindfulness practice. If you are not mindful while cooking then you risk slicing your finger open or burning the entire meal (I did both
). Even if you do not meditate or practice mindfulness in any other way, cooking is a basic ritual to get you in the habit of being mindful of your life. - Cooking is exercise. While you cook you usually stand a lot, lift heavy pots and pans, move around the kitchen, bend and squat. While you cook you definitely burn more calories than when you order take-out or eat at a restaurant. I usually do some squats, stretches or lunges while I am waiting for the water to boil or for the pancakes to turn brown. Even 5 minutes of exercise is better than no exercise at all.
Balanced living is not about some difficult spiritual practices or grand notions. Balanced living consists of simple everyday activities that you can turn into sources of inspiration for your everyday life. Cooking is one of those things but there are others like working on cars, cleaning the house, working in the garden and many-many others. If you want to live a balanced life you should start paying more attention to your everyday tasks and treat them like sources of inspiration rather than boring routines.
Keep it balanced!
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Hello, 
Hi Ana,
..but i am more biased towards being mindful. I learned the hard way by burning my finger a couple of times 
What a wonderful topic! I personally love love love to cook. And i cook everyday. My hubby loves my cooking so thats and added bonus
But youre right,we can tailor make recipes to fit our tastes…and having a balanced lifestyle is much the same thing. We can make our everyday activities our learning and personal development drafts…and then the possibilites are truly endless.
The points you have mentioned are so so true. I especially love #9..ok i love them all
Much Love,
Z~
I know you already mentioned how cooking your own food makes it so that you are more likely to eat healthy ingredients, but that point really can stand alone. Yes delicious food is awesome, but when we cook our own food we tend to eat more healthy.
I love cooking. And funny how our mood affect the taste of food we make. We can take the same ingredients, follow the same recipe and do everything exactly the same but if we are in a bad mood, the food will taste much worse. Great points, Anastasiya!
Oh dear…this is a big area where I find no passion at all. I don’t eat any red meat. Put most of the chicken, fish, vegetables on the grill daily. Also make a lot of salads.
I was one of 10 and my mom lived to cook and was very good at it. I loved to bake when my four daughters were small but have not interest in that either….help!
Is this OK or am I missing something;)
My mom does not like cooking either. In her case she lost passion for cooking because my dad never got really excited about eating any food and she didn’t feel any support. I love how she cooks but I know that she does not find joy in it.
Cooking is just one way of balancing life but it is even more important to find a lot of different daily routines that can help you. As I’ve mentioned in the post, we are all different and you might get excited about doing something else like cleaning the house or working in the garden (I hate cleaning the house personally and I do it only because I love living in a clean environment.)
Thanks for sharing your point of view Tess, I know that there are a lot of people like you in the world and I know that cooking is not for everybody
Anastasiya,
One of my goals is to learn to cook more meals…but it seems like it’s always easier for me to go out to dinner! Thanks for motivating me to try to be more creative!
Peace.
Thank you Zeenat, Justin, Lana and Fr. Michael for your comments. I am glad that you enjoy cooking as much as I do or at least plan on doing it more. I hope that all your meals turn out great!
This is one tasty post
I hardly cook and it all started because my mother is the PERFECT master so nothing I did was ever good enough and I stopped trying.
I think I’m a bit old to have mommy issues
so your post is a great encouragement to embark on a cooking adventure.
Bon appetit!
I hope that you will rediscover your passion for cooking. Holding on to any “issues” in life is not the way of growth and I think that you perfectly know it
Everything I cook is finished for 5-15 minutes. Is that cooking?:)))
I mostly agree with the third!
As long as you cook something and not just throw it in the microwave, it’s cooking
At least that’s how I look at it.
Anastasiya,
I completely agree with your thoughts on cooking. It is certainly creative. Even though I somewhat follow recipes, I freely substitute items I have on hand for things I don’t have. It definitely brings the family together. Even after all these years, I have wonderful memories of my mother’s cherry coffee cake and lemon meringue pie. It gives you the chance to try exotic fruits and vegetables from the local farmers’ markets (at least part of the year). And, as you say, the food you cook at home is more healthful and tasty than most food from a supermarket, and you know what ingredients are in it.
I’m starting to get hungry from just thinking about this. Well done!
Anastasiya,
I love so much the book and film Like Water For Chocolate. When she wept preparing the food, everyone at the table wept with her while eating the food. When she laughed as she prepared the food, everyone at the table laughed.
How good is that!
I love your observation about how balancing cooking is. My childhood was spent at the kitchen table with my grandmother who cooked and had a great sense of playfulness and humor.
My closest friend is a remarkable cook and we have shared years of joy and pleasure in her kitchen – with her kitties jumping up on the counter I might add.
Great post. Kitchens and food bring such joy!
Thank you Madeleine and Lauren for sharing your thoughts about cooking. I am glad that you find as much joy in cooking as I do!
Cooking is really an art in which a person can indulge to limits which only he or she can decide.
Though I like cooking but I am no good at it.
But I am working on it.
One funny cooking adventure which I was a part of is documented here…
http://lumuhuku.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/a-detailed-report-on-how-to-make-momos-oops-how-to-watch-momos-being-made/
Cooking takes practice and I am not always good at cooking either (pretty much any desert I fix is a disaster
) I think the most important part is to enjoy the process. By the way, thanks for the link to your article. I’ve never tried Momos before but they look very tasty.