Study Break

So when I was in college, during Reading Week, the period before exams, study breaks were a very big thing - and they always, always involved food.

Sometimes they were official, organized by the dean of one of the residential colleges. These were the most exciting as they involved pizza or Chinese or Thai. They were held around 10:30 at night, so you'd head over from the library or your room or wherever, stuff yourself with a tremendous amount of grease, sugar, and caffeine, and then head back to further attempt to stuff your brain with the thinking man's equivalent of moo shoo chicken.

There were also less formal breaks. Trips to the Nood, or Pizza and Breakfast, or a simple run to Durfees for Swedish Fish and Otis Smunkenmeyer cookies. (And if you were my friend Suset, several bottles of Sprite.) When I think back to how much crap I ate in those days, it's a wonder I didn't emerge fatter than I did. Sigh. It was kind of wonderful.

These days in studying for these California teaching exams, I've returned to the study break, but now I'm older and slightly wiser. Yesterday, it was a trip for authentic taco/torta magic. Last night it was baking muffins from the Tassajera cookbook (whole wheat, sweetened with apricot jam, one batch to which in a moment of collegiatesugar-craving madness, I added chocolate morsels and dried cranberries.) Today's study break - why eating the muffins of course.