A whole lot of sandwiches and procrastination

Of course, when you have to study and revise for exams, you suddenly remember you need to repot a plant, or do the washing up, or sew up that hole in your sock, right? The best thing about sitting these exams at the moment is that my flat has never been so clean. When I found myself washing down the bathroom door, I realised I probably should knuckle down a bit more.

But while I managed to neglect the siren call of the hoovering, the fact that I still need to eat every day means that I can happily procrastinate by cooking up some elaborate dinner. I mean, look at this:

I didn't need to make all those different elements, did I? I could have just had a sandwich. But noooooooo, because I needed to study, I hunkered down in the kitchen and got cooking. Still, that dinner was just great. There's some runner beans with sauce I had made and frozen earlier, some kale with pumpkin seeds, brown rice with lentils, curried roasted chick peas, and a really amazing dressing. I'm going to have to work out how I made it again so I can tell you. I think you'd like it.

As well as a feeling of gluttonous warmth, the other thing that I tend to experience after making an elaborate meal is fear - and a justified one at that - that I haven't been revising. Then I head back to the books and study until I can think of the next excuse to head back to the kitchen. Normally, that's for a sandwich.

Sandwiches can't take very long to make, right? Wrong! If you're desperate to avoid spending another minute pondering the organelles of a plant cell, then you can spend a looooooong time crafting the finest sandwich a small London kitchen can make.

Exhibit A:

The eggless salad sandwich, possibly one of my favourite sarnies of all time. It's not just a matter of slapping some filling in bread, oh no. You've got to press your tofu, press it again a second time in a dishcloth, mix it up with other ingredients and allow all the flavours to mingle for a bit, get up, taste the mixture, decide more mingling is needed and pop back a while later. And all that's before you've even got to considering what salad goes with it.

I can even procrastinate with hummus. That's Hummus, the most lazy, half-arsed bread-botherer in the world. The thing that everyone gives vegans when they lack the imagination to think of a single think a herbivore might eat (see also: salad, bowl of fries). Rather than go out to the local shop and pick up some hummus, a matter of about a ten minute round trip, I decided to make my own: roasted a yellow beetroot, puree it up with tahini and lemon juice, washed up the blender, and made a wrap. Waaaay more time efficient than going to the supermarket, obviously

But if you're really looking for class A, top drawer, Premier League procrastination, may I present the fishless finger burrito? Not only does it require 15 minutes or so in the oven for the fishless fingers, it requires walking to the nearest health food shop (at least 40 there and back if I go fast), and making coleslaw, including marinating time.

Looking at all those sarnies, I kind of feel pretty bad about all the time I wasted making sandwiches. Then I remember how good they were, and I think 'yeah, that was time well spent'. Remind me of that when my exam results come out...