{"id":27778,"date":"2025-12-05T10:10:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T17:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/?p=27778"},"modified":"2025-12-08T14:15:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T21:15:23","slug":"mindful-cooking-and-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uchealth.org\/today\/mindful-cooking-and-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindful cooking and eating"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Savor fragrances in the kitchen. Enjoy small bites. Relax and breathe to boost your mindfulness during this busy season. Photo: Getty Images.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A disaster looms for the Good Ship Health.<\/p>\n

On the map ahead, the shoals are marked Holiday Gathering, Christmas Dinner, New Year\u2019s Eve and the particularly insidious triplets: Secret Santa, Sing-along and Just Another Small One.<\/p>\n

Navigating the Thanksgiving dinner buffet was calm waters compared to what\u2019s on the horizon.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll hear that the best ways to both keep weight off and your head on are to \u201cnot\u201d do things. Well, that\u2019s one way to ennoble negative space.<\/p>\n

My feeling, however, is that what works best for healthy eating and drinking this time of year is just to slow everything down \u2014 while cooking or dining.<\/p>\n

If the pace gets glacial, that\u2019s fine. When time isn\u2019t moving, that\u2019s a lot of \u201cnot\u201d doing, too.

For other great cooking tips and recipes, check out these other posts<\/a>. <\/div>\n

The present-day word for \u201cslow\u201d is \u201cmindfulness.\u201d When we attend to the moment, and lose thought of the past or future, we effect the pause. We savor one bite instead of shoveling in two; we sip instead of gulping.<\/p>\n

My favorite time when I’m cooking is to do stuff like this: standing over a carrot and staring at it, figuring out how to slice or dice this hard orange thing that is about to roll away from me; stirring a liquid in a figure 8, slowly and splashlessly, so that the eddies and waves take on their own shiny life; watching onions go from ghostly to golden to amber then auburn, losing their sulfuric sting, becoming honeyed.<\/p>\n

All these things take time. Each moment enriches my senses in turns, one sense, then another: color, sound, smell, taste, touch.<\/p>\n

If I like, I am able to sense them altogether when I set to eat the food I\u2019ve prepared, but I can\u2019t even do that well if I don\u2019t slow things down a bit and spend time on the forkful or linger on the bite, letting the flavors and textures come slowly both onto and into me.<\/p>\n

A great mindful practice that any cook can learn to do is to make a simple French omelet, canary-yellow and creamy at the center. It is our featured recipe.<\/p>\n

The several steps, and care with each of them, are their own reward. They slow the pace of the day, focus the mind, calm the soul.<\/p>\n

Here are some more suggestions for cooking and eating mindfully during these busy weeks that cap our year:<\/strong><\/h2>\n