Mondays suck, we know this. The harsh reality of the work/school week are a slap in the face after innocent, lazy (but completely misleading) Sunday. When you come home exhausted and hungry on a Monday evening, you crave warm fuzzy comfort food, but your body is angrily demanding that you go to sleep as soon as Gossip Girl is over.

What’s a starving girl to do? Never fear, darlings, this chicken pot pie recipe will have you feeling cozy and well-fed super quick — and it’s so easy and fast that you’ll be tucked in by bedtime. Read More »

“Is it supposed to be this hard?” I whined to my mom in an email on Tuesday night. I remember in years gone by that seniors generally didn’t seem like they were having problems until the second semester, when the crunch really hits. But sure enough, Tuesday afternoon saw me sitting on the floor, looking despondently at the mess in my room while scarfing down Lucky Charms like my life depended on it.

Taking 20 credits, working two jobs, and writing your thesis doesn’t leave for a whole lot of free time, and that’s a pretty hard thing to adjust to. I usually like to procrastinate – I work better with a gun to my head, it seems. But now I have to work in advance, because I don’t have time to do things the way I normally do.

This weekend, I don’t even have time to drink. What is my world coming to?

As for lessons learned these past two weeks or so, I realized the value of backing your sh*t up like your life depends on it. My thesis chapter was due on Monday. I didn’t finish it until Tuesday. Now, because I have an older version of OpenOffice (a free version of Microsoft Office, essentially), when my computer decided to spazz out, I lost 11 out of 12 pages.

Cue comfort food binging. Read More »

Yikes, that doesn’t look appetizing.

Let’s be honest: when I get home at the end of a long day of work and classes and studying, the last thing I want to do is whip up a fancy meal for myself. Sometimes, I just need something fast and simple. But after a few months of take-out and pizza and dining-hall food, I realized that I was sacrificing my waistline for the sake of convenience.

What’s a calorie-counting busy girl to do?

Embrace the frozen entrée. I know, I know. Frozen entrees make me think of my Mom and Weight Watchers and scary-looking meat products in soupy liquids. No thanks.

However, there are some delicious frozen meals out there if you know where to look. The best part? Every last calorie and carb and gram of fat and milligram of sodium is right on the box, so you know exactly what you’re getting. To top it all off, they provide us with something this entire country is severely lacking—portion control. You shouldn’t need a hamburger the size of your head just to feel satisfied—frozen meals are a great way to teach yourself what is considered normal (the measurement for a normal serving of protein is the size of your fist…not your head).

Since I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of the frozen meal, I thought I’d round up a few of my favorites, for your thawing pleasure: Read More »

I apologize to the lactose intolerant, this may seem a bit insensitive. But I love me a grilled cheese.

Something about grilled cheese is so fantastically comforting. It’s crunchy, yet gooey. It’s not too hot, it provides the perfect amount of warmth. It can be dunked in tomato soup, or can stand alone. And anyone from the age of 8 onward can make it! Just be careful not to burn it.

A recipe for grilled cheese may seem foolish, but it can be an art form. And yummy as the diner-style ones are, you can make a healthy one in two seconds. And it’s still delicious.

Sammich for one:

2 slices of 2% milk American cheese

2 slices whole wheat or multigrain bread

non-stick cooking spray

frying pan

Assemble your sandwich (I have faith you know how to do this). Spray the exposed bread on each side with non-stick cooking spray and put them in the frying pan, letting the bottom piece of bread toast and allowing the cheese to start getting melty. Flip as you deem appropriate to toast the other side and melt the rest of the cheese. I prefer my bread to be a golden brown but some people are pickier about the crunch factor. Read More »

Loneliness doesn’t just suck, it blows. I know this because I have dealt with it first hand. The emotions, the weight gain, the boredom. With a new city, a new job and no new friends to speak of, loneliness and I were pretty tight.

If I told you I had a sure-fire way to beat it, I’d be lying. Because if I had found the magic formula, it wouldn’t have taken me 8 months to realize that graduating from college in four years wasn’t the worst decision of my life.

Fortunately for you, I have a few good tips about what NOT to do. Whether you are kicking it at home for the summer or making your way in a brand new city, these tips are sure to keep you from going as crazy as, well, I did. Read More »

It has been a few months since breaking up with the ex and while he is out telling the world that I am still calling, I have been out on the town looking for a new man to bunk up with. Being that I am not living in some big city that allows for a Carrie-Bradshaw-Revolving-Door-Of-Men type situation, I have been resorting to some new ways of scouting out the men.

Namely, internet dating.

Ah! Say it ain’t so! I must be crazy, right? But seeing as I spend my days sharing my life stories via the internet, it only makes sense that I create some of those stories that way as well. Well, that and the fact that my brother met his wife online and they had a bomb ass wedding.

So far, so good. Actually, great.

I have come to realize that there are so many benefits to online dating. For one, I can do it from the comfort of my couch. In the comfort of my underwear. While enjoying a heaping bowl of Mac and Cheese (the ultimate comfort food!). All that comfort – paired with the fact that I can hide behind the glow of my computer screen – makes the whole getting to know you period a whole lot more…well, comfortable. Read More »

Does the food at your cafeteria suck? Want to make some extra cash? Can you cook candied olive crumble with fish, braised short ribs with scallops, robiola cheese with fizzy carbonated grapes or chai ice cream with miso-sesame chocolate and powdered peach and pineapple? Didn’t think so.

Fortunately for Duke senior Bryan Zupon, who just loooves food, all this was a possibility. So, he opened a restaurant…in his dorm room.

Those Duke kids, they’re always going the extra mile. Damn overachievers.

“I don’t think that New Southern cooking has changed since the mid-’90s,” Zupon said to the New York Times. “I’d talked to a lot of big-name chefs in the area — for personal reasons and also for the newspaper — and they were so apprehensive to change. I was like, this is frustrating, so I’m just going to do my own thing and see where it takes me.”

Now I know, having grown up in North Carolina, that the state is not known for its culinary wiles. Although there aren’t any top restaurants, there are still some delicious places I look forward to eating every time I go home that could rival some of the best southern cooks out there.

Allow me to share: Read More »