I cooked up a lot of my ingredients, yeah. I liked seeing the various results, plus selling meals was a decent way to get some cash. I enjoyed thoroughly exploring an area before moving on to another area, so I would pick up a lot of the items that were scattered around each area, plus also complete any shrines and quests I could. I also didn't try to venture into the far reaches of the world until later, and that seemed to be where stronger enemies were. Plus, the first "dungeon" I cleared happened to be the Zora one, so getting Mipha's Grace first certainly helped with survivability. I also couldn't beat the Lynel there and had to sneak around it, though it was more because I didn't have strong enough weapons when I tried to fight it.
I think I found the climbing gear (or parts of it) early on, so that made it easier to climb up higher places. I also focused more on stamina in the early goings, since I didn't find hearts all that useful until later.
Just to be clear here, I don't think my way of playing the game is better, or that anyone else's way of playing is worse. Just attempting to offer up another perspective on the game. This is a game that pretty much lets people play the way they want to play, and there's no wrong way to do that. The challenge level is very much tied into that as well, and I think the paths I chose were the easier ones, something I was probably downplaying with the way I was talking and I shouldn't have done that. I don't play games for challenge, so I wasn't looking for it.