Stress Cooking

So, we've all heard of stress eating. And likely many of us have done it. I personally am guilty of overindulging in a pint of ice cream or throwing back a whole can of Pringles under tense, overworked conditions. Something about stress just makes crappy, sugary and salty, dripping with too much bad for you stuff food so much more appealing. As if it needed any help.

But this is not the point or topic of this post. As mentioned in the title, we are here today to discuss stress cooking.

Now, typically when I get stressed I have a game plan. It goes something like this:

1. Get my planner and a pencil out
2. Write a list- everything that needs to get done, and when the deadlines are
3. Budget my time. Give every task an allotted number of hours to get through them in
4. Schedule it out. Task out every hour. Study for 319, write paper for 198, eat dinner, take a nap, do 221 work again, breathe. Sometimes I forget to schedule in time for breathing
5. Do it

Anyway, as you can see, when I get down to it, I mean business. Right now I scheduled a half hour to check emails, facebook and blog. So, I'm right on schedule.

I used to fail to schedule time for the stress-relievers, though, you see. I still feel guilty writing "watch half an hour of mindless TV" in my planner, or even "call home" because these things are not going to get my immediate goals done. They will, however, keep me sane. But when I get so swamped that I can't even find the time to write these things in, there is one pleasure that I can always justify the time for: food.

You see, if I stopped eating, I would pass out. Can't study passed out in the hospital from starvation, now can you? And, I can stretch this argument even further. If I stopped taking the time to make food, I would have to live this week on Goldfish crackers, trail mix, and (if I really felt like committing some time to it) toast with peanut butter. And that would impair my test taking skills. I would hate to score below my targets on account of undernourishment and fruit snacks.

So, you see, it is utterly imperative that I continue to eat well, even under the greatest burdens school can heap upon my frail shoulders.* I take this excuse to the extreme, and tend to indulge quite heavily in Stress Cooking.

Unlike stress eating, stress cooking really is fairly healthy, at least as far as what I am actually putting into my mouth is concerned. Whether it is a healthy habit or not remains to be determined by a professional of psychiatry or some other such qualified individual. Instead of eating chips and candy all day, I go crazy trying new recipes and recreating old favorites, with varying levels of success. Because I have budgeted time to dinner, I go for it. When I'm stressed I actually go through the effort to thaw some of the meat that I have in my freezer for once, for example. Usually there's no time to thaw so I just go without protein, but when I'm stressed, I make time for the microwave! I will find the time to defrost chicken, stir fry it with broccoli and carrots, serve it over fluffy delicious rice. Or to bake up some enchiladas or a pan of lasagna (as if I could ever actually finish a whole pan of that stuff before it goes bad!) or some other fabulous culinary miracle. Tonight, I might go a little more low key, and make up a tillapia fillet- they thaw and cook much faster, and I don't have to cut them up at all.

Anyway, just writing about it has me going too far. I have come up with at least sixteen more ideas for dinner tonight since I started this blog post. Yikes, I'm a mess! Gotta go- the kitchen is calling!

*Note the sarcasm. I don't really feel this weighted down with school, I just sometimes get awfully melodramatic over my life. This here is called laughing at myself.