Comfort Food - Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies + Macaroni & Cheese

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe:

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour (you can use half whole wheat if you want)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup softened unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp water
• 2 large eggs
• 12 oz. chocolate chips

Macaroni & Cheese Recipe:

• 1 pound elbow macaroni 
• 1 pound (4 cups) shredded extra sharp or sharp cheddar cheese
• 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• ¼ teaspoon ground mustard
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups low-fat milk 
• 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons butter (optional)

Comfort Food. It is what we rely on when we have nothing else to turn to when life's sorrows gets us. And what is more quintessentially comforting than homemade chocolate chip cookies, and good old-fashioned mac & cheese?

However, if you eat too much, there are detrimental consequences - an unhealthy lifestyle means you won't be able to enjoy a - well, healthy life. Is you keep using food as your escape from sorrow, you will never be able to overcome the sorrows in your reality - just temporarily subside it, hoping it goes away. But if you go in too deep, then you may never come out...

Eiji Miyake, the main protagonist of David Mitchell's novel, number9dream, is an escapist. However, he doesn't escape through food - he escapes through alternative realities. Everyone has an inner escapist, and food is the easiest, most available option, just as daydreaming is for Eiji. But Eiji's escapism prevents him from coming-of-age - he is stuck in a reality that blurs with his alternate ones, causing a standstill in his growth. Towards the end of the book, when Eiji starts to face reality, it is painful for him at first; when reality hits him hard, he admits that he "would sell [his] soul for [reality] to be a dream" (Mitchell 400). But he also realizes that the more he escapes, the farther he gets from being past to reconcile with the past that haunts him everyday and the farther he gets from facing reality, and moving on, to achieve his "number9dream," where he can begin his true story. 

PROMOTIONAL POSTER | “Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

PRESENTATION HANDOUT | “Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.” ~ Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

PRESENTATION POWERPOINT | “I want to run. To do what I always do, have always done, for the last five years of my life. Escape, flee into the shadows. But this time, I stand my ground. I'm tired of running.” ― Marie Lu, Prodigy

RESEARCH PAPER | “Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ” ~ Susan Sontag

AP OPEN QUESTION PROMPT I | “Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.” ― Anaïs Nin, Incest: From a Journal of Love

AP OPEN QUESTION PROMPT II | “...if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.” ― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

PROSE CLOSE READING I - CHART

PROSE CLOSE READING I - ESSAY | "Overall, children don't realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie.” ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

PROSE CLOSE READING II - CHART

PROSE CLOSE READING II - ESSAY | "My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another.” ― Amy Plum, Die for Me

POETRY CLOSE READING I - CHART

POETRY CLOSE READING I - ESSAY | “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.” ― T.S. Eliot

POETRY CLOSE READING II - CHART

POETRY CLOSE READING II - ESSAY | “Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS - SET I | “There are no safe choices. Only other choices.” ~ Libba Bray, "A Great and Terrible Beauty"

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS - SET II | “When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.” ~ Philip Pullman, "The Amber Spyglass"

FINAL REFLECTION | “Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.” ~ Poppy Z. Brite

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