Recipe used: http://www.food.com/recipe/delicious-corn-muffins-24344
I just baked these beauties from scratch and have pulled them out of the oven to cool. The apartment smells amazing, and they taste absolutely amazing!
Doing my own calorie analysis, calories per muffin = 229 cals (which to mean seems huge for such a small muffin!!) Won’t be having these again for a while, but for now, James and I will enjoy them!
I have a little explaining to do behind my baking streak. So since moving to NYC and in my quest to find an entry-level job in HR, I would have to say the past 2 months since I have been actively seeking work has been the most stressful time I have ever encountered in my 23 years of life. Within these 2 months I have applied to over 290 jobs for entry level HR positions and administrative roles (as a way I could work my way into the HR dept at some point in the future). So I have applied to 290 jobs, had a couple of in-person interviews, numerous phone interviews and countless calls from Recruiters saying they wanted to meet with me to discuss roles. Additionally I accepted a role as a Junior Recruiter/Admin Assistant and had the worst experience with the person who employed me, it was so bad that I couldn’t take the stress of the work environment, so I didn’t go back after 2 weeks there. So anyway, my visa (J1) is all about the “cultural experience” rather than the work experience. They want you to “find a job that requires minimal training to sustain your cultural experience…” Well unfortunately this is not what I wanted out of the visa… I want to be able to get a job and work in the US for a couple of years before returning home with my boyfriend. Being on this visa means that I can’t use recruitment agencies to find jobs, nor can I do internships to gain experience, so basically I am stuck looking for a part-time job as a waitress or something (which I’m not putting down or anything), but the fact that I have come over to the US, seeking employment, I am qualified with a Bachelors in the field I am looking for employment, seems to be not enough to be able to get noticed in the US.
And look, I can totally understand that American employers would hire a local over a foreigner on a visa any day, because the process is easier, there is no visa and it involves less cost….but for the rest of us on visas seeking work in our field, how are we supposed to catch a break??
So anyway, I’ve gone off on a bit of rant here, so back to my story behind my baking streak. So I had this terrible experience with starting work with this employer, and for that two weeks I have never been so anxious, stressed, unable to sleep and upset in my life. Without realising any correlation between my stress and baking I started to make recipes I’d found on the internet from scratch. My boyfriend one day said to me, you do realise that ever since you engaged in discussions/started working with this woman you have been baking something twice a week? I mean, I love cooking – but normally its cooking dinner, not baking, let alone baking from scratch, I’m normally a packet mix kinda gal. But here I was stress baking, making anzac biscuits, muffins, irish soda bread and cakes all from scratch. It was my way of relaxing and not thinking about anything else except that tasty treat I would be able to sample in half an hour. James has benefited from my stress baking as well!
But I have been baking for almost a month now, and whilst it has been great, it needs to stop. We are both on a mission to lose weight (me, I have 4 kgs left after putting on over 11 kgs when I went gallivanting around Europe for 3 months last year… so I still hold on to 4 kgs, which I am very determined to get off. So from today, I have baked my last sweet treat – corn muffins! The only thing I am allowing myself to bake is irish soda bread, as its so nice to have fresh bread, and it is low GI (I think), so I think baking a loaf once a week for the weekend will be fine. But the rest of the yummy treats are not being produced for a while now.
So there you go…. a little bit more of my story – about my experience of finding work in NYC, how I deal with stress (a new method I have discovered without knowing) and now my determination to lose those last 4 kgs…
The Life of an Aussie living in New York City 