Easy Japanese Home Cooking for Busy and Tired People

The one-pot that feeds the body and spirit

Kaki Okumura
Heated
Published in
7 min readFeb 22, 2020

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Photo: DigiPub/Moment/Getty Images

Healthy food is a lot of things, but one thing that I believe we don’t pay enough attention to is the spiritual element of it.

Extreme diets, already-prepared delivery meal services, and snacks that tout themselves as healthy are not necessarily “bad” for us, but over time they are unsustainable and can’t complement our social and emotional needs. We’re complex humans, not robots, and food needs to reflect that. In this sense, food is not just fuel — it’s society, it’s culture, it’s love, and it’s community. While leading a healthy lifestyle can be a lot of things, I believe, that to address these very human needs, we need to base our eating around home cooking.

Illustrations: Kaki Okumura

I’m not ignorant of the demands of modern life. We have work, we have school, and we all lead increasingly busy lives that command our constant attention and energy. Home cooking and sitting down with the family is not as easy as it seems — it can be really difficult. But luckily, I have a solution to offer.

It’s nabemono-ryori

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Heated
Heated

Published in Heated

Food from every angle: A publication from Medium x Mark Bittman

Kaki Okumura
Kaki Okumura

Written by 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 🌱