Simkin: Food for thought, or delaying thought

When you’re in hardcore study mode, there’s a scant number of things you can legitimately… When you’re in hardcore study mode, there’s a scant number of things you can legitimately justify leaving your books and notes for. Breaking for food, however, is never controversial.

Eating is non-negotiable — during this and finals week, you have every excuse to procure and prepare food. What’s debatable is how long the endeavor should take.

You know you could allot a mere five minutes to heat up some Easy Mac, but you could also sort of justify making baked macaroni and cheese from scratch, couldn’t you? Or walking to your neighbor’s because their microwave works marginally better? Or checking first if any of your roommates would like some — or anyone on your floor, or in your building or in the entire quad. With a little ingenuity, the most simple of meals can be construed as vastly time-consuming endeavors.

There’s even an Urban Dictionary definition for this phenomenon: “Procrastination Cuisine — (n.) food purchased and/or prepared solely for the purpose of avoiding work that one is committed to have completed by a certain soon-approaching time.”

With enough effort, any recipe can be contorted to meet work-avoidance purposes. Nachos might seem innocent enough at first — 30 seconds tops to melt some cheese on tortilla chips in the microwave and back to the books — but to the creative mind desperate to avoid memorizing the political timeline of China, such a dish is lacking. It would doubtless be better with salsa. Hmm, and maybe sour cream. Or sliced hotdogs!

Now you’ve got a semi-meal on your hands — not a snack that can be absentmindedly nibbled with one hand.

Of course, you can’t have those greasy fingers anywhere near your laptop. You’d better eat the entire thing standing up at the kitchen counter, napkin at the ready. Or perhaps it’s too much to devour solo, and you’ll have to seek out some friends or roommates to assist you.

Naturally, nachos are not the only food that can have devastatingly time-consuming “If You Give a Moose a Muffin”-esque consequences.

A peanut-butter sandwich can become needlessly complicated with the addition of marshmallow fluff and Nutella. The annoyance of slurping noodles can easily justify snapping every individual Ramen noodle strand before boiling them. As for popcorn, I can’t think of a way for you to expand upon the time needed to microwave it, since adding toppings or mix-ins is a seconds-long task at best — although perhaps you could accidentally-on-purpose burn it and then have to air out your entire living space. Because who can concentrate on studying in a haze of popcorn smoke?

Furthermore, nothing goes hand-in-hand with a late-night study group meeting better than snacks — other than, perhaps, despair. You’ll instantly become everyone’s favorite classmate if you show up with freshly baked cookies. Get inventive with cookie cutters, or needlessly and obscenely detailed with cookie decoration.

Peanut butter blossoms (peanut butter cookies topped with Hershey’s kisses) are a crowd favorite for any group without nut allergies. Peppermint bark is another easy treat: combine crushed peppermint and melted white chocolate, spread on wax sheets and leave on the counter or in the refrigerator to harden.

Just because the holiday season is rapidly approaching doesn’t mean you need to limit yourself to Christmas cookies, though those will serve our purposes here fine. Many of my fondest childhood memories involve annual menorah lighting/tree trimming parties and the corresponding multifaith cookies.

Hopefully you’ll draw some solace from your food-related study breaks but, unfortunately, “break” is the operative word here. Now put down The Pitt News and get back to work.