I think I’ve developed the dubiously positive habit of stress cooking.

This past cycle of tutorials, I’ve been feeling particularly overwhelmed because of an upcoming group trip to Bath that the Sarah Lawrence program is taking us on. Ordinarily, my paper-writing routine goes something like this:

Monday: Political theory tutorial; researching film essay
Tuesday: Researching and writing film essay
Wednesday: Finishing and submitting film essay
Thursday: Film tutorial
Friday: Researching political theory essay
Saturday: Writing political theory essay
Sunday: Proofreading political theory essay; researching film essay

The trip to Bath, in and of itself, isn’t a huge issue, except that I wasn’t nearly productive enough last week. As a result, I didn’t have time to even begin working on my film research until today. Which means that I’ll still be researching for most of tomorrow, which means that my essay won’t be written in time to submit it before I leave for Bath on Wednesday morning. I’m awaiting a response from my tutor to the rather frantic e-mail I sent him this afternoon, but in the mean time…

…I’ve been cooking basically nonstop. I’ve made baked eggplant, a turkey-based meat sauce (many stories of cooking catastrophe associated with that one), some roasted potatoes, a bunch of tuna salad, more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than I know what to do with, rice and lentils, and, in the oven now, baked apples.

I have absolutely no use for all this food! I’m not even actually hungry, and the fridge is so full of my roommates’ stuff that there’s no room for all the leftovers that my mania is generating. At the very least, though, I’m going to have an easy time, food-wise, for the next week, because between what I’ve purchased and what I’ve managed to cook, there’s a pretty incredible quantity of stuff waiting to be eaten.

Time to check on my apples to make sure they’re not detonating (we lack a corer, so I’m skeptical about whether they’ll actually be successful)…