Sharing

Two things:
1. Even without bacon and green onions, this salad is amazing. I'm not sure if I shared it before, but it's really good.
2. Kraft now makes homestyle mac and cheese, which is basically velveeta with breadcrumbs.  It's meidocre on it's own but it's fantastic with barbecue sauce and baked in the oven on 425 for 10 minutes.  

Ew.

A friend had this link up this morning. All of the food on there just made me feel really really nauseated. I mean, seriously, who wants to wrap bacon around that much food?
I love the way food tastes. But as much as I find McDonald's french fries delicious and love to indulge in the occasional burger or greasy grilled cheese, I find that as I've gotten older, my tastes shift more to whole foods. Foods that offer texture, taste, and flavor at the expense of high amounts of fat and chemical processing.
So I find pictures like these much more appetizing. Even if the food is not necessarily "health" food, it is real food. I wish I could translate this recipe, it looks delicious.
Now I really want a fresh mixed greens salad or a vegetarian panini. Unfortunately, its mystery hot pocket day in the barefoot lunch bag.

Finals

So the reason, dear readers, all one of you (hi Mark!) is because this past August, I entered law school. And since my contract with those of you in readerland is illusory, I am not bound to post and thus, I did not much.
I also did not cook much. The cooking triumphs I experienced this semester were few and far between. The relationship triumph of having my boyfriend make dinner a lot of the time? That was a nice triumph. We've tried a lot of new recipes, especially for the slow cooker - if you are going to go to graduate school, invest in a slow cooker. It will change your life and you will never order takeout again. We also recently bought a wok and have been discovering the beauty of stir-fry. (Which is a manly thing to do, so men, wok it up. It's the indoor barbecue.)
So - a few cooking triumphs, with recipes to come:
1) Roasted red pepper risotto.
2) Potatoes au gratin (can be made either slow cooker or in the oven).
3) Mini - pineapple upside down cakes.

But the real reason for this post is its finals time. As in, I'm procrastinating. That's right. Although not by cooking as much as I used to. In law school, there isn't time to cook to procrastinate!
But finals requires a different eating schedule. During finals, you feed your mind. I'm always hungry while I study - I eat constantly. How can that possibly be healthy? It's not. Try to pick the highest volume lowest calorie snacks. Popcorn is good. Grapes are great. Oranges are a little juicy but not bad. A granola bar will not make you feel better about life, skip it. Small chocolate covered things are good, as long as you buy them in small packages. Get ones covered in dark chocolate - more antioxidants.
Also consider the smoothie. A morning smoothie with a healthy chunk of protien powder? mmmm!
Buy frozen berries, milk, and vanilla yogurt. Get some chocolate or vanilla whey protien powder, and use as much as you're comfortable with. This normally comes in giant containers, so I'll let you know when I find it in small, manageable sizes. Put in blender or mini-food processor. I actually recommend the mini food processor if you are only making one serving - less mess.
Blend.
Pour into cup. Enjoy. Blend to your own preferred thickness - straw, spoon, or sip.