01.01.70

The day starts like this: the 7 a.m. alarm rings, she makes her way downstairs, brews four to five cups of coffee and drinks them all before heading to her 8 a.m. class.

At lunch, she has a couple of glasses of diet Mountain Dew. In the middle of the afternoon, around 3 p.m., she has another canned soda. In preparing for her night classes or study sessions, she usually consumes an energy drink. If she needs a boost after that, in the middle of the night, No-Doz almost certainly always does the trick.

Katelyn Girvin, a Lansing sophomore, said she needs her guilty pleasure of caffeine, to stay on top of her difficult academic schedule. Without being mentally alert at all times, the triple psychology, political science and legal studies major said she could easily lose her way.

“I haven’t really been able to enjoy myself or go out with friends. Thanksgiving break is the first time in months I’ve been able to relax and just watch TV for a few hours,” Girvin said. “It’s always ‘I need to move to next thing, I need more caffeine.

Source: Central Michigan Life

by Patrician Palette

Many of my best childhood memories were made in a small kitchen in Ohio, surrounded by my family at the oval-shaped country-kitchen table, making candy at Christmas.

We would make fudge or ‘white divinity fudge’, which is egg whites cooked with sugar. Mom would boil the sugar (dangerous stuff), Sis would help, Joe and I would kinda stand around and ‘look’ helpful, and then Dad would come in and do anything requiring muscle. (Muscle is essential when making candy.)

At culinary school, we made a traditional French Christmas candy, similar to Divinity, called Nougat de Montelimar – a pure white chewy nougat made with lavender honey, sugar, bright green pistachios and toasted almonds. Both recipes require cooking egg whites with hot sugar. The main difference is that nougat is made with honey and sugar cooked to the hard crack stage and formed into a block while Divinity is cooked to a soft ball stage and dropped from a spoon....

Read more...

by TPP Mistress

Many of my best childhood memories were made in a small kitchen in Ohio, surrounded by my family at the oval-shaped country-kitchen table, making candy at Christmas.

We would make fudge or ‘white divinity fudge’, which is egg whites cooked with sugar. Mom would boil the sugar (dangerous stuff), Sis would help, Joe and I would kinda stand around and ‘look’ helpful, and then Dad would come in and do anything requiring muscle. (Muscle is essential when making candy.)

At culinary school, we made a traditional French Christmas candy, similar to Divinity, called Nougat de Montelimar – a pure white chewy nougat made with lavender honey, sugar, bright green pistachios and toasted almonds. Both recipes require cooking egg whites with hot sugar. The main difference is that nougat is made with honey and sugar cooked to the hard crack stage and formed into a block while Divinity is cooked to a soft ball stage and dropped from a spoon.

Read more...