I collect words.

"Well I am almost 23, confused with all the lines in between.  They are dying to be read, softly spoken, simply said, so tell me, do you believe in the girl that is me?"

"And God answered me in silent reverie."

Obsession.

It's a problem belonging to so many blogs.  Luckily, the fashion/design blogs aren't a problem simply because I don't have the money.  The problem lies in the food blogs.  Lately I have obsessed over the recipes.  I just want to try ALL of them from the African Peanut Stew to the Channa Masala to the Cocoa Brownies.  It seems that is all I can think about is, "when I can have a chance to turn on the oven, or heat up the stove?  How will I adapt the recipe to be my own?"  Instead of thinking of what significance p-values and t-distributions have (statistics midterm Thursday), I have been thinking about what flavors I can add to spice up winter greens, or how to lighten up these sweet desserts.  To motivate myself to study, I planned on spending all of Thursday night baking.  But tonight, I completely caved.  I forgot about the textbooks, the stress of work, and cranked up the oven (and the music).  I finished dipping the last of the truffles and tried out SK's cocoa brownies.  (My goal for the month of February is to become a better bake.)  I don't know if I feel any less stressed, but I will definitely have something sweet to share with my friends tomorrow.

If only statistics was as much fun as my kitchen.

pasta.

What a crazy day...between jury duty, midterms, and trying to get paid (it has been 5 months, and I have yet to receive a paycheck).  Instead of just heating up leftovers (as I usually do on Monday nights), I decided to unwind by cooking.  I checked out some recipes on Allrecipes.com and after realizing that I hardly had anything in my kitchen/pantry (Not even a tomato!), I finally succumbed to pasta.  I sauteed garlic & onions in olive oil, then added canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and for added "healthiness" fresh spinach (I'm tired of salads at the moment), & salt & pepper to taste.  I garnished with gorgonzola...not sure that was the best pair because of it's strong flavor.  

I can't believe what a stress reliever something so simple as that was.  Afterward, I was able to get a couple of good hours of studying in.  And now, I have the bug.  As soon as I'm done with my midterm (and yoga) on Thursday, I'm going to spend a couple of hours baking.  I also want to start having friends over on Sundays for dinner (after Super Bowl of course)...It might be fun to do different theme nights.

On a side note, I FINALLY finished A Hundred Years of Solitude.  If only I could be as strong of a woman as Ursula.