Thoughts of Tara

I have a lot to be thankful for. These last couple of weeks have been a little rough for me. Between being overwhelmed at work and school and trying to be a good daughter, sister, and friend, I kind of lost my sanity for a minute. I over worked myself to the point where I got sick last weekend and I'm still trying to fight off the last of whatever bug I managed to catch. This time of year is usually pretty stressful, but I just feel like it's worse this year. Coping with the sale of my childhood home has been harder than I thought; it's brought up a lot of residual grief for my dad. I've been missing him more than usual lately. I feel like I am losing the balance I had between work, school, family and friends; work and school have kind of taken over and I haven't had much time for myself. I haven't read part of my new book in weeks. I haven't been able to sit down and watch more than 1 episode of something on Netflix of Hulu without feeling guilty for not

So, I just wanted to say that the reason I've been sucking at posting lately is because I've just been having a rough time with a bunch of things and my mind has been elsewhere. Shit has kinda hit the fan at work and school, and being homesick is not helping. I'm hoping this rough patch ends soon. It has to.. right? Anyways, I'll make my other post a decent recipe so that way I am contributing something somewhat worthy to this blog. Ttyl.

YUM. I am not a huge fan of banana bread, but after trying this recipe, I am in love! I saw this recipe on my Tasty app and thought, "what the heck, let's try it out"! The banana bread part of it was so moist and so yummy, and the cheesecake part was great because it wasn't as rich as regular cheesecake (less guilt after eating it!) Here is the ingredients list for the banana bread layer: 4 ripe bananas (the riper, the better!) 4 tbsp. vegetable oil 1 egg 1/2 cup sugar 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1.5 cups all-purpose flour 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. baking soda 1/4 tsp. salt 1 tsp. cinnamon For the cheesecake part: 32 oz. (4 blocks) cream cheese, softened* 1/2 cup sugar 1 tbsp. vanilla extract 1 cup milk 1 tbsp. gelatin powder caramel sauce, to taste *I always use reduced fat cream cheese whenever I make a cheesecake, and I have found no difference in texture or richness compared to cheesecakes made with "full-fat" cream cheese.