Random House Group
Search
Expand Mobile Menu
The Lazy Genius Kitchen
Read an Excerpt

The Lazy Genius Kitchen

Have What You Need, Use What You Have, and Enjoy It Like Never Before

About the Book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Lazy Genius Way comes a fresh perspective for getting the most out of your kitchen!

“An empowering, transformative, and slightly sassy guidebook.”—Jenna Fischer, actress, author, and producer/cohost of Office Ladies podcast 

You want your kitchen to be the heartbeat of the home, but you’re overwhelmed and out of breath trying to make it happen. Meals are on a never-ending loop, and you don’t have time to prepare dinner, much less enjoy it. Popular Lazy Genius expert and bestselling author Kendra Adachi is here to help! 

Packed with proven Lazy Genius principles, the book will teach you to: 
• name what matters to you in the kitchen—whether that’s flavor, convenience, or something else entirely 
• feed your people with efficiency and ease 
• apply a simple, actionable five-step process—prioritize, essentialize, organize, personalize, and systemize—to multiple areas of your kitchen, empowering you to enjoy your kitchen the way you’ve always wanted 

You don’t need magical recipes, fancy gadgets, or daunting lists to follow to the letter; you just need a framework that works whether you’re cooking for one or for twenty. 

Straightforward, strategic, soulful, and a little sassy, The Lazy Genius Kitchen will turn your hardest-working room into your favorite one, too.
Read more
Close

Praise for The Lazy Genius Kitchen

“Most ‘kitchen books’ are cookbooks, but not this one. The Lazy Genius Kitchen is your guide to strategic meal planning, organization, cooking, and cleaning up. You don’t have to dread stepping into the kitchen, because Kendra Adachi shows you how to create a sustainable rhythm for managing your kitchen and feeding the people you care about. And you’ll have fun doing it.”—Jenna Fischer, actress, author, and producer/cohost of Office Ladies podcast
 
“Have a kitchen? You need this book. Kendra teaches you how to be the boss of your kitchen in all the ways that matter most to you.”—Myquillyn Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Welcome Home
 
“Adachi is like the smart big sister I never had, revealing the secrets of a kitchen that not only take the stress out of daily meal prep, but actually make it fun. With warm, no-nonsense advice and proven formulas that liberate you from kitchen clutter and complicated recipes, The Lazy Genius Kitchen is an essential tool for living better every day.”—Ingrid Fetell Lee, author of Joyful
 
“Whether you are a new cook in a quandary about getting something on the table over and over again each day or a seasoned professional who lives and works in the kitchen but gets weighed down by decision fatigue, Kendra is here to put a friendly hand on your shoulder and remind you what could and should really matter about keeping the heart of your household beating strong.”—Bonnie Ohara, author of Bread Baking for Beginners and owner of Alchemy Bread Co.
 
“This book is chock-full of smart cooking hacks, from tips to eliminating what you don’t need to creating autopilot solutions that make it easier and more efficient to get meals on the table. I’m officially on the Lazy Genius cooking train. Choo choo, fellow food hackers.”—Sherry Petersik, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Lovable Livable Home
 
“This is so much more than a system or a collection of rules. It’s about embracing and loving who you are and working within that to create the space that works for you.”—Ashley Rodriguez, creator of Not Without Salt and author of Date Night In
 
“Now that I have thought about how I can make my kitchen into a place that serves the needs and personality of my family, I feel empowered as I move through my daily kitchen chores. Kendra has shown me what matters . . . even a lazy cook like me.”—Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex & Money podcast and author of Let’s Talk About Hard Things
 
“With Kendra’s no-nonsense, witty, and practical advice, you’ll feel empowered to choose your own priorities based on looking at your life with a kind, grateful eye. The result is not only empowerment but peace and gratitude even for the messy places. That’s a skill I’ll be using not only in the kitchen, but in the rest of my life, too.”—Aarti Sequeira, cookbook author, chef, producer
Read more
Close
Close
Excerpt

The Lazy Genius Kitchen

Introduction


Hi! I’m Kendra. So nice to see you. Thank you for reading this book, but before you go any further, we need to cover something rather important. You need to know what a Lazy Genius is.

Obviously, you can’t have a Lazy Genius kitchen without being a Lazy Genius, so here’s your primer.

“Who decides what matters?” you ask.

You do.

You are the only person who can live your life, but my guess is you’ve been living that life according to other people’s rules.

Ask me how I know.

As a self-help junkie, I spent years collecting tips and hacks, systems and manifestos, rules and routines to optimize my life. I spent countless hours and a ridiculous amount of mental energy building a big Machine of Life, trying to replicate the perfect day, succeed at the perfect goals, and be a generally perfect person.

However, that approach had its problems—namely, that I became more robot than human. Can you turn yourself into a cyborg? The jury’s still out, but I say yes.

Living like a robot is living like a genius, and while genius sounds good in theory, it has its problems. You’re at the mercy of everyone else’s opinions, running yourself into the ground to live a perfect life. You’re so obsessed with following a plan and doing it right that you ignore your own humanity.

Eventually, you hit a proverbial wall and simply can’t do it anymore. My wall came in the form of motherhood, but walls aren’t exclusive to life stage. We all hit one, and if you haven’t yet, it’s coming. Sorry to spoil your fun.

At that point—after all your genius plans dramatically fall apart— you swing to the other side of the spectrum and get lazy.

You give up on everything. You think, If I can’t do it perfectly, why do it at all? If I can’t manage everything, why manage anything? Enter being a “hot mess.” The phrase is on all those t-shirts and coffee mugs for a reason. It feels good. However, working hard at being a mess is often just as draining as working hard to be perfect. You’re a differentlooking robot, but a robot all the same.

Listen, there’s nothing wrong with order or with dirty hair and yoga pants. What is wrong is believing they’re mutually exclusive. What is wrong is making snap judgments about a person, including yourself, about her value and vulnerability based on where she lands on the Lazy-to-Genius spectrum.

No one, and I mean no one, is completely together or completely a mess. 

Being a Lazy Genius is not about either trying hard or giving up. Those don’t have to be your only options. Which is rad, because you want to live a life that means something, right?

Being a Lazy Genius is how you make that life happen. You’re a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t.

An you get to decide what that is. 

I got so jazzed about this idea a few years ago that I wrote a whole book about it.

It’s called The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done; it was a New York Times bestseller (which is not a crazy thing to say at all), and I truly believe it can make you more of who you already are and help you get stuff done.

Most self-help/productivity books give you a set of rules to follow based on what worked for the author. And I get that! When you love a new recipe or find an awesome kitchen gadget, you want to tell all your friends about this great new thing! But not everything works for everybody, no matter how good it is.

That’s why The Lazy Genius Way is based on principles, not rules or systems you need to copy. These thirteen principles can Lazy Genius (yep, we made it a verb) literally anything based on what matters to you. You can slowly build a system, think strategically, and be intentional, all without being so daggum hard on yourself.

You want to invest your efforts in things that matter to you.

You want to feel secure when you walk in a room.

You want to be steady when things around you spin out of control.

You want to live a life of purpose and heart, connecting with yourself and the people you love.

You want to be yourself without bowing to everyone else’s “shoulds.”

Being a Lazy Genius is how you make that life happen. You’re a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t.

And you get to decide what that is. 

I got so jazzed about this idea a few years ago that I wrote a whole book about it.

It’s called The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done; it was a New York Times bestseller (which is not a crazy thing to say at all), and I truly believe it can make you more of who you already are and help you get stuff done.

Most self-help/productivity books give you a set of rules to follow based on what worked for the author. And I get that! When you love a new recipe or find an awesome kitchen gadget, you want to tell all your friends about this great new thing! But not everything works for everybody, no matter how good it is.

That’s why The Lazy Genius Way is based on principles, not rules or systems you need to copy. These thirteen principles can Lazy Genius (yep, we made it a verb) literally anything based on what matters to you. You can slowly build a system, think strategically, and be intentional, all without being so daggum hard on yourself.

About the Author

Kendra Adachi
Kendra Adachi went to college to become a high school English teacher but instead became the Lazy Genius, passionately and candidly sharing how to stop doing it all for the sake of doing what matters. Her work includes hosting The Lazy Genius Podcast, cooking dinner on Instagram, and convincing her three young kids that talking into the phone is Mommy’s job. She and her husband love raising their family in the same North Carolina city they both grew up in. More by Kendra Adachi
Decorative Carat