Nosh For Students by Joy May

Another great cookbook for students with a vegetarian cookbook also available. This cookbook is designed specifically for students when the authors son left for university without knowing how to cook any meals. This book has a key, similar to the last cookbook I reviewed (The Ultimate Student Cookbook), although there are more specific keys such as length of preparation and cooking times separately along with the cost of the meal per person to the penny.

The book has similar categories to the Ultimate, although there are a wider variety:

The basics – with essentials such as budgeting and planning meals for the week

Fast Food

Broke but hungry

One-pot dishes

Something mum might cook

Vegetarian

Something for the weekend

Friends around

Make your own takeaways

Comfort food

Date-Night

Cakes and Cookies

Desserts

These recipes all have photos besides them so you can compare your creations to how they’re supposed to look! There is also a “V” printed next to recipes if they can be made vegetarian (outside of the vegetarian category) such as by using vegetarian meats or changing ingredients. The meals are well organised, making it easy to find exactly what you are looking for, from a quick meal which is cheap with little washing up, to a more expensive meal which takes a bit longer but will impress. There are also snack foods like salad dips and nachos as well, meaning that you’ll never have to phone mum again to ask how to cook!

Recommended for:

Anyone who needs help with cooking.

This is designed for students who are on a tight budget (and notoriously lazy!) but is also suitable for anyone who has trouble with cooking healthy meals for cheap and wants some helpful ideas

Age recommendation:

Any age!

It’s a cookbook, children can either cook recipes with their parents or choose dinner, teens can cook and adults can use it for cheap and tasty ideas!

Comment what books you would like me to review next 🙂
Theowlemporium

An Update

I know I haven’t blogged for a long time, I’ve had my exams and have had no time to do anything but revise! I am hoping that this might be my last update on this blog, if I’m lucky. I feel a lot better within myself now, I know I’m not amazingly beautiful and that I’m not as thin as I’d like to be. But I have an amazing boyfriend who loves me more than I could ever deserve and the chance to start a new life if I pass my exams and move away to university. 

I just want to say, to anyone who might be reading this who suffers with depression, I know that you’ll have heard it all before. I know it’s cliché. But it does get better. Find something that you want to achieve in life and reach for it. I wanted to move out of my home were I feel like I have never belonged. I worked hard and I may possibly get to do that. Even if your goal is just to reach tomorrow without self harming and staying alive, then make that your daily goal. As long as you have something to achieve you have something to live for. 

I honestly hope I never have to post on this blog again. And I know that sounds bad but this is my place where I release all my negative feelings and everything to do with my depression. And I never want to be in that place again. But if I am I know that I always are a place to come to. 

Thank you to everyone who’s supported me through this. You mean more to me than you could ever know. 

That’s it till next time 🙂

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Carrying On

Well I still feel the same way as yesterday. There was a comment yesterday by “Jane Doe” which was amazing and so helpful, but nothing will get me out of this place except time.

I’m actually really upset with how it’s affected me this time. Ever since I’ve being going out with A I’ve felt a lot better about myself and my looks, but this has all crumbled these past few days. I used to think I looked reasonable and that, on a good day, I could pass for pretty. But now I see myself the same way I did six months ago: ugly, fat and useless. For all I know that’s the realistic view of myself and A was giving me false hopes that I was something more, but I can’t believe him anymore and I don’t think that confidence will come back quickly.

I know “Jane” said yesterday that death won’t be the easier route, but right now it seems like it would be. I’m in the middle of my A levels (final exams before uni for 17-18 year olds in England and Wales, they’re called Highers in Scotland) and the stress is too much. My parents have told me they think I’m going to fail and it’s got to the point that where I just want to give up.

I know I’m supposed to be positive. I know I’m supposed to think that I can do it. But I don’t want to. And I don’t know how to fix that…..

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Spoke Too Soon

Just as I thought that maybe it had finally left me a line for a while and it comes back. I just keep imagining the peace that would come with death. But I’m not brave enough to take the leap. I wish I was, with all my heart, but I’m not. I don’t know how to be.

How can you step in front of a vehicle and not think about how the driver will feel? How can you hang yourself without thinking about how your mother will feel when she sees your corpse hanging from the ceiling?

I want to end my life because I feel like I’m a waste of space and people would be happier with me gone, and this includes my parents, my boyfriend, my best friend and everyone else. Yet the only ways I can think of to end my life will hurt others. Even in the most trivial way. My parents would have to clean up the mess and clean out my room, go to my funeral and waste money on me. A train, car, bus, van or lorry driver will always wonder if the girl they hit wanted a life. If she wanted to be happy and live. I don’t. I want to die, I want that nothingness but I’m too weak to reach for it.

Part of me, the instinctive part, the primal part, won’t let me go. It won’t let me die. It’s too afraid, but I know one day it won’t be and I can leave this Earth and just be nothing.

It’s all I want but I’m too scared to grab it.

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Let It Out

One of the best things you can do when you feel like there’s no hope is to tell someone, something. It sounds like the worst idea in the world, letting someone else into something so private, but it’s so worth it.

I’ve found that writing the couple of blog posts I’ve posted has helped so quickly, I know that someone is reading what I say, I know that I’ve told someone, but I’m not being laughed at or teased or told to go kill myself. And that’s helped my confidence.

It also helped that I told those close to me, my boyfriend, my best friend, and after a lot of persuasion from my boyfriend, my form teacher. Knowing they’re there for me if I need them is amazing, I know that if I fall I have a net to catch me and that net will never break.

I know that sounds silly. What if you get in a fight with your friend? What if you and your boyfriend break up? What happens when you leave school? But these questions don’t bother me. I’ve got in plenty of fights with my best friend, but we know each other so well by now that we cannot not be friends. It sounds so childish: we’ll be friends forever! But I know that we will always be close, and even if I don’t see her for the next decade, she will help me if I need it and I will help her. If me and A break up, I know it will be hard, but I can get through it. We’ve both talked about what would happen if I needed him after we broke up, and I know that I can still go to him for help no matter what happens between us. As for when I leave school, there will be other people who can help me, and if I get in contact with my teacher he will make every effort to help me whether I’m his student or not.

This is what you need to do if you have depression or want help. Tell someone, people close to you. Don’t ask questions about what will happen if you stop getting along or being around each other, just go with it and if you trust them then they will help you.

The worst thing you can do is bottle it up. I hope you can find the courage to release what you’ve kept inside for so long.

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Coping Well

I have been feeling a lot better recently, and this has meant I haven’t felt the need to post: but I’ve not posted for a while know so here goes.

I haven’t actually felt depressed since the last time I made a post, and this sounds brilliant, but instead I’ve been incredibly angry. I know this is just hormones but I know I’m being irrational and I physically can’t stop myself. There’s been a lot of arguments with A and we almost broke up once and it’s all been my fault. This isn’t me looking for people to say that it wasn’t, this is me being honest and saying that my boyfriend has been the victim of my bad personality. I really don’t know how he puts up with me but somehow we get through and I don’t know what I would do if we didn’t.

A used to follow this blog, but not anymore. He says he wants me to be able to post anything on here and not be worried about him seeing it and at the time I wasn’t bothered but now I’m glad he did. When we almost broke up I thought we were over, and I know that this may seem like an overreaction to most of you, but I knew that if we broke up I would kill myself. He’s my rock, the only person who supports me through anything. He’s the one who is happy for me when I get university offers when everyone else doesn’t care, he’s the one who spends his free time helping me revise for my exams, he’s the one I can tell anything to. But I couldn’t tell him this. I would feel so guilty if he stayed with me just because he doesn’t want me to kill myself. I’ve had a lot of friends in the position with their boyfriends and I’ve never liked that they did that. So I refused to mention it.

I know that was long winded and most people won’t care, but for me that was the most defining moment of this month, well this year, so far. Because he stayed. I know that without him my depression would spiral, and I honestly don’t know how I would cope: but he can never know this. Which is why I tell the Internet instead. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. You are completely disinhibited and can just be truthful with me and that’s what I need.

So yeah, a long winded slightly boring post but I felt bad for not posting for so long. I hope I didn’t bore you too much!

That’s it till next time 🙂

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Checkmate

An amazing short story by Epiphany in the Cacophony. A must read!

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

Epiphany in the Cacophony

I remember the time my father taught me chess. On a Sunday afternoon, I sat cross legged at the center table in the drawing room, silently watching him put the pieces in place. “This is the queen, and this is the king”, he said, holding up the pieces. My eyes widened. I reached for them, running my fingers gently along the piece, examining it closely as he set up the board.

He went on to explain the rules to me. “The aim is to protect the king at all costs” he said, showing me how the different pieces moved across the chessboard. It was the most beautiful game I’d seen. I stopped listening. All I saw was a story. A story of two kingdoms, equal in strength, competing for supremacy.

I saw a battle begin before my eyes. The pieces charged towards each other, falling by the dozen as…

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YouTube Channel

Hey guys, just posted a video on my new channel. You can find the video here:

and my channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1XnAqeYHnJscze3ZgfC7kA/feed

I’ll be posting updates on my blog as well as some extras on there whenever I get the time 🙂

Gracethedisgrace, signing off

The Begining

Well here we go, my first blog. I’m oddly nervous about something where I’m completely anonymous. Maybe that’s because I’m about to tell people what I’ve never told anyone before.

This blog will be about my depression, and just to start out I haven’t been medically diagnosed and I’m not on any medication, but I feel like I need to give it a name – the feeling that makes me want to kill myself – I have to name it and shame it. Depression seems to fit best of all.

I’ve started this blog after years of suffering in silence, trying to get by every day. But around 4 months ago, I broke down and told my boyfriend everything. (For the sake of privacy I’ll call him ‘A’, and Grace isn’t my real name 🙂 )

For a few months after I told him we just dealt with it together, but eventually, after my form tutor noticed something was wrong, A persuaded me to tell him. It was a huge step for me because I didn’t feel like people would accept me if they knew, and it gave me the strength to tell my best friend too.

For a little while this worked out great, I had a support net and I felt a lot better. But then my form tutor asked me “So are you better now?” and me, not wanting to seem weak, said yes. But I lied, I’m not feeling better, and I can’t keep using my boyfriend as a therapist. We’re only young, me being 18 and him being 17, and he can’t deal with it. The panic he gets when I don’t reply to texts after I’ve said that somethings wrong, he’s cried a few times and he’s even had to tell his parents because he didn’t know how to cope.

I know a lot of you (if anyone is reading this) will wonder where my parents are in all of this. Well, they’re in the background, not knowing that anything is wrong. I’ve never had a close relationship with my parents, I just feel that if I told them they would laugh at me like they normally do, and I don’t want to bother them with my problems.

I started writing this today after my feelings almost ended my relationship. I was so close to breaking up with him, because I feel so guilty every day. But he wants me to go and speak to someone, a doctor or therapist, but I thought I could try this and see if the internet could help me. I hope that whoever is reading this isn’t going through what I’m going through, but if you are or if your situation is worse, I hope this little blog can help just a little bit and show you that you’re never alone.

So that’s my first blog post, can’t wait to hear your reactions.

Gracethedisgrace, signing off