A few days ago, I packed up my apartment in Baltimore, stuffing my car to the brim, and drove away from the place that’s been my home for the past four years. I graduated on Thursday and the day was everything they said it would be - full of pomp and circumstance and pride, but also overwhelming emotion when it finally hit me that my time at Hopkins was over. I said goodbye to my friends on Friday and made the drive home up I-95 to my house in New Jersey. It was harder than I thought it would be, …

**Giveaway Closed 5/31/12**

My favorite thing to drink when it’s cold out is always red wine. I don’t know if it’s because of the time I spent in Italy, but ever since I got back from being abroad, red wine always seems like the perfect drink, whether it’s over a long meal, after a long day, before bed…

But when it’s warm out, I can’t even think about having red wine without getting sleepy and what I really want is a cool and refreshing cocktail. Give me an icy glass of muddled mint in a mojito and I’ll love you …

When it comes to dessert, I’m a sweet + salty kind of girl. In my opinion, any sweet treat can be made a whole lot better by a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. I used to work at a really great ice cream shop and bakery and one of my favorite treats there were these insane sea salt caramel brownies. The miniature chocolate bites had little wells in them to hold the wonderfully buttery, salty caramel - I’m getting hungry just thinking about them. Once I discovered these and realized that salty sweet was the way to go, …

Kimchi grilled cheese, you ask? Yep… I went there. Kimchi grilled cheese is what happens when I don’t have class on Tuesdays and I spend too much time wandering aimlessly around Whole Foods. I decided to buy a small jar of kimchi because I was getting my every-other-month-or-so Korean food craving that doesn’t go away until I have some of my grandma’s hot soup or corral one of my friends to get bibimbap and pan chan with me in Baltimore’s “Koreatown,” which, unfortunately, is a tiny street with just three restaurants.

I love kimchi. Whenever I have some in …

You’ve heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I find that to be oh so true. History has shown me that breakfast, unlike other meals, has the profound ability to set my day right. A good breakfast that is nourishing and satisfying can do wonders for my concentration and task-completing abilities for the day ahead, whether I am at my internship or in a full day of class. This power can go both ways, however - a bad breakfast can throw off my whole day.

Recently, I’ve gotten into a breakfast rut. I love breakfast …

Johns Hopkins is located in the northern part of Baltimore in Charles Village. It’s a green campus, set off in its own little neighborhood and really combines the best of two worlds - it’s a self-contained campus just minutes from some of Baltimore’s coolest, most exciting neighborhoods.

When I told people I was going to Hopkins, people loved to talk about how I was going to be “living in The Wire.” But I was pleasantly surprised to find that my first impressions of Baltimore were closer to the truth: it is a fabulous city with lots of charm. There …

Confession: overripe bananas stress me out. This is totally unnecessary because there are so many great uses for brown bananas. You can freeze them and have everything you need to make a smoothie; you can mash the banana to make a deliciously sweet peanut butter sandwich. Overripe bananas are great because they are at their sweetest, and are thus the perfect ingredient to add to oatmeal, pancakes, you name it. They also provide a great excuse for one of my favorite activities: procrastibaking: “Well, I have to spend the morning in the kitchen because otherwise the bananas will go bad. Really, baking banana bread is the responsible thing to do.”

As I’m writing this post, I’m sipping on my first iced coffee of the season, the sun is shining brightly outside for what seems like the first time in awhile, and it’s a whopping sixty degrees. I’m rejoicing - it’s finally spring, and although I know we’re not completely out of the woods yet (I’m sure a few cold, rainy days are in our near future) I can finally say that the warmer season is just around the corner.

That being said, there’s a part of me that is sad to say goodbye to some of my favorite winter meals, …

As a creative writing major I often find myself working away on stories late into the night. I have a habit when I’m writing to break up my progress with little treats.

This always involves many cups of tea, hard candies, and more often than not, lollipops to suck on when I’m ruminating about a plot or new character. But when I’m looking for something to munch on, granola is always my go to. It’s sweet, crunchy, and is just as delicious with milk or without. My favorite packaged granola is Love Crunch. It combines perfectly toasted, coconut-y granola with dark chocolate and freeze dried raspberries and strawberries. It’s definitely my favorite out-of-the-box granola, but to be honest, I really prefer homemade.