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

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

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

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