More Back-to-School Advice: Snack Right
A rising 1L I follow on Twitter recently posted, “Stocking up on packaged, processed food with preservatives galore.” She wasn’t joking, and the impending doom of the law student study-life (im)balance was driving her to seek out quick, easy, non-perishable calories. Probably every first-year law student will feel the pull of the vending machines or school cafeteria at some point this year. It may be the last few pages of an all-week brief-fest, or the final hours of Blue Book-ing a memo. But it will happen — and I’m telling you to fight the urge.
In the first few weeks of my first year (last fall), I started baking muffins every other week. And I believe it was one of the best choices I made to improve my ability to perform well in school. Here’s why making and bringing your own snacks will help you get through the stress that is law school life. You can:
- Save money.
- Sustain your concentration.
- Keep your body healthy.
Hopefully you can see how these three things will boost you on your way to BETTER LAW SCHOOL GRADES.
As I write this, I’m nomming on fresh, homemade banana-walnut-honey-applesauce-blueberry-coconut (whole wheat, low-fat) bread. Amazingly yumming, filling and CHEAP.
Law school is hard, all that brain work really does make you hungrier, and to function well you need to be willing to snack throughout the day. I won’t go off on a nutrition lecture just now, but just know that eating food with complex carbs, lower fat and decent protein will stick with you throughout the day and keep your blood sugar (and therefore your concentration and emotions) on track.
Here is my favorite basic recipe for a quick bread, that is so flexible and adaptable you’ll be able to make it flawlessly no matter how addled your brain might be by the Rule Against Perpetuities or the UCC.
Super Simple Sanity-Saving Snack
This recipe makes one large (9″x5″x3″)quickbread loaf, six small loaves or about 18 muffins. If you make muffins (best for portability! quiet in the library!), note that because these are so low in fat, they tend to stick to the muffin papers. Leave the muffins, in their papers, in the tin until completely cool to make the papers come off more easily.Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Prepare your pan: grease if using loaf pan(s), put in papers for muffins.Mix in a medium bowl:
2.25 cups whole wheat flour or any other whole-grain flour(s)
1.5 tsp baking powder
Big pinch of saltIn another bowl, mix any and as many of these as you’d like (so long as you have something sweet and the milk, you’re golden):
2+ ripe bananas, mushed with a fork
.5 cup applesauce, or 1 small diced apple + 1/4 cup milk
.25 to .5 cup raisins, craisins, chopped dates, prunes or other chopped dried fruit (preferably that you’ve soaked in juice or milk until tender)
.75 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
.25 cup sweetened flake coconut (optional)
.5 cup chopped (or crushed w/ back of a knife) nuts – I like walnuts, almonds are good for your brain, too
.75 to 1 cup of milk
Scant .25 cup honey or bown or raw sugar
Any other fruit, nuts, seeds, wheat germ, yogurt, etc. you’d likeMix the wet ingredients (milk, etc.) into the dry (flour, baking powder, etc.) until *just* combined. It’s good if there are some small clumps of flour in the mix (this will make your bread/muffins more tender). Pour into prepared pan or muffin cups – about two-thirds full for muffins.
Bake until done: when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean. Since there are no eggs in this recipe, you don’t have to worry about cooking it perfectly.
Approximate cooking times:
Large loaf: 50-60 minutes
Small loaves: 25-35 minutes
Muffins: 20-30 minutesPortion and keep in the fridge until you stuff ‘em in your backpack on your way to school.
Related posts:
Mmmm, muffins. The gf and I have been hitting up the farmer’s market on a weekly basis to grab up the squash and make squash muffins. They’re fantastic, and I should post the recipe in this thread, but I have an interview tomorrow for which I need to prepare :p
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[...] Law School Snackery [Legal Geekery] [...]
Someone said squash muffins??
http://caloriecount.about.com/summer-squash-muffins-recipe-r248545
Enjoy!
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Laura Bergus Reply:
August 18th, 2009 at 9:42 am
@Kim, Thanks for sharing! Yum yum. I’m happy to see people breaking away from the normal (carrot or zucchini) veggies (although those are good – esp. carrots in the winter). I’m going to try beets one of these days and I’ll let you know how that goes. I am a fan of savory muffins, too, which opens up a whole world of corn, cabbage, turnip, parsnip, potato, onion, herb, garlic, (bacon)-y goodness…
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I agree 100%! I’ve found that taking the time out of law school life to eat healthy and exercise regularly absolutely makes me a better student: increased focus + more energy = better grades ;)
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HAHA! Imagine my distress and shame upon realizing that my tweet from Sam’s Club would be displayed on a what-not-to-eat post! Just kidding; you’re exactly, completely, 100% correct. I hereby proclaim that I will try really, really hard to eat less processed food and do more cooking at home. Furthermore, I wholeheartedly denounce myself for the shocking lack of good judgment. :)
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Hey – this recipe looks great. I see you wrote to mix the ingredients in two separate bowls. Ok – then what? Just combine them? If that’s the case, why not mix them in the same bowl? I’m not an experienced baker, so sorry if the answer is obvious…
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Laura Bergus Reply:
August 24th, 2009 at 6:55 am
@Emily, Whoops! Yes – mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another – then combine with just a few stirring strokes. You don’t want to do it all in one bowl because you want the baking powder and salt well-mixed with the flour, but you want the flour-salt-baking-powder mix to be just barely mixed with the wet ingredients. Over-mixing will make your bread/muffins tough and chewy, and they may not rise well. Note that making a cake is a different matter – since the batter needs to be well-mixed for baking, I’ve had pretty good success doing it all in one bowl, for what it’s worth.
Thanks for pointing out this omission – the post has been updated. :)
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[...] From our friends across the pond there has been a lot of blogging from law students detailing their return or first impressions of law school. A few weeks back we had the 10 commandments of law school from fearfully optimistic ( a collection of tips equally applicable to us), and more recently we had an excellent post on note-taking “You’re a law student not a court reporter“. Over at Legal Geekery the importance of eating correctly (an often looked over topic) was brought into the spotlight with regards Snacking. [...]
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