On Sabbatical

It's barely August and already my brain has shifted back into calculus and lab report mode.

Fortunately, I've only got 3 semesters of this shit left. Until then, I plan to (quietly lose my mind and) keep all the cookies to myself. Well, maybe not all to myself. I'll stop by every once in a while if I come up with something particularly interesting. Likely at a time when I've decided that the 3% impact that week's lab report is going to have on my final grade just isn't worth the impact on my mental health. Deciding to not do work offers a wonderfully freeing feeling.

But don't worry! Taneasha is more than happy to feed you all in my absence. Hell, the woman even invites door to door religion salesmen in for dinner.

Starting next week, Taneasha takes Tuesday for tips, tricks, and treats! Brought to you by the letter Tau and the number 2.71828.

math math math math blog math math math

Math. It's all I freaking do.

I did it for 10 hours a day both days this weekend. I survived by eating the last of the beef jerky, baby carrots, and tortilla chips with cream cheese and salsa. During the week, I'm living off of my precooked frozen meals, and tonight I had toast for dinner.

The result is that I'm more than a little hard pressed for blog posts... (Taneasha is playing me a song on the world's smallest violin right now in her completely bare kitchen)

I was going to do a post on how to cut up a mango to best maximize the eatability of it. But it's tough to take pictures of yourself cutting up a mango when you're cutting up a mango.

I know this is really pushing it as "cooking" but someone else will be making dinner here for me next week, so for now, you'll have to do what I'm doing and survive off of toast. 

Cinnamon Sugar

• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 c sugar
• a jar with a good lid

I've had my cinnamon sugar jar for ... nearly 18 years now. It's a small jar that once held premade pasta sauce. I've had it pretty much since I moved out of my mom's house, and it's travelled back and forth half way across Canada with me. My mom had a similar jar. Same one for as long as I could remember. It moved everywhere with us too, and I'm pretty sure she hid it on the day that I moved out so I couldn't take hers with me.

Cinnamon sugar has always been a bit of a staple for me because of that jar.

It was a fast breakfast, an all purpose snack, and it's what my mom fed us as we were starting to feel better after spending days sick on the couch watching soaps. It's a rare treat when I can get just that right mix of butter and sugar on bread that's toasted just right...

And I know some people try to sprinkle the cinnamon on, and then the sugar, but it doesn't work. There's never that same perfect consistency and homogeneity of spice and sweet. You have to mix them together before hand.

Measure out your cinnamon and sugar and put them in the jar.

Shake.

It's blurry because I'm shaking it. Sure is.

And then...

That perfect sandy colour.

Toast yourself some nice whole grain bread. White bread just seems too... insubstantial for this purpose. I mean, yeah, it's nice and squishy sometimes, but cinnamon has such a strong, spicy, robust flavour that it needs something sturdy under it.

Yes, it's a gratuitous food close up, but I really don't have much to work with here.

Once your butter has melted, sprinkle on just the right amount of cinnamon sugar.

I am so freaking happy with the fluke that is that picture.

It may seem like a big pile o' sugar on toast, but it looks like more than it is, and once you spread it around the sugar starts melting into the warm butter...

It's also great in coffee, handy to have on hand for fancying up cookies of any sort, and can turn plain old biscuits into cinnamon biscuit buns.

But for now, this

with a glass of OJ and a multivitamin, is dinner.

My mom would be so proud of me.