Back in the day when the HBO megashow “The Sopranos” was a Sunday night television staple, I would create Italian dishes for dinner.  We’d have “Sopranos” night before the show aired.  As Carmela served her family plates of Baked Ziti, I would, too.  It was cheesy (and so was the food).  But it was fun.  Similarly themed dinners are popping up all over the country about the ABC Television drama, “Lost” (now in its last season).  Indeed, an entire website—Lostpedia—is devoted to the trivia/minutiae all important aspects of the show, and “food” has its own page.

If we have to cook dinner and eat lunch anyway, why not make them a themed affair?  Have some fun with food!  Today’s recipes:  food that we can have for lunch, but also food that the survivors of Flight 815 might have had on the island.

The survivors—at least early on—used the roasted meat from a Wild Boar for their...

Writer’s Block is a malady many of us in higher education face. 

That is, we experience times when we can’t produce work.  Either we are tired, overwhelmed, fearful, uncertain, have lost the “muse,” or we simply don’t care about our subject.

Whatever the reason, there are ways to overcome this problem.

• Stop making excuses and Just Do It! Enough said.

• Clean your desk or workspace. This is a metaphor for clearing your head.  Once the desk is cleared and clean, you might find yourself thinking clearly.  However, for some, the opposite is true.  They need a messy creative work environment.  The point is doing the opposite of what you think you need.

• Find a book closest to you, open the book, find an arbitrary sentence, and start writing about this sentence. You might write anything that comes to mind about the sentence: how silly it is, how profound it is, how it...

Sometimes–OK, a lot of the time–lunch comes from the previous night’s dinner.  Today’s recipes fall into this category. Fajitas!  Fajitas are good to eat, but for me, the best part of fajitas are sensory:   the sizzle sound of the meat/veggies on a cast iron plate/grill as a server brings the food to the table, and the rich, spicy smell of the food sizzling on those cast iron plates.  We at ProfHacker can’t provide the cast iron plates or that yummy fajita grill smell to supplement your lunch, but of course, we can provide the recipes.

Fajitas, while a wonderful dinner, make a great lunch.  What follows are two recipes for fajitas: one mushroom, one steak.  The mushroom fajitas are quick to prepare.  The steak fajitas require marinade time, so perhaps this is a weekend dish with leftovers for Monday’s lunch.

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Ingredients

• 1 ...

Some of us do it more than others, and most of us do it more often than we probably admit.   Get your minds out of the gutter, people! I’m talking about eating fast food.  Spring break is here for many of us, and that means a change in routine.  Sometimes, spring break is an excuse opportunity to eat fast food.

A study done by the University of Minnesota claims that, not surprisingly, “convenience” is the most common response to the question, “Why do we eat fast food?”  “Hating to cook” was the second most common reply.  As someone in higher education, I can attest to the convenience factor.  I’m busy and even though I write this column every week, I do admit to eating fast food more often than I’d like.  It is convenient.  It’s interesting, though, how we often excuse our choice:  “I’m busy!”  That kind of excuse can imply that we are...

Long gone are the days when eating healthy (and eating vegetarian) meant eating raw celery and drinking a glass of water.  Today’s ProfHacker column provides two easy vegetarian lunch options that move us far beyond the boring lunches of old:  Tomato Salad and Pesto Pasta.

Today’s recipes contain many of the same ingredients, so you can make both at the same time, freeze or store what you do not use immediately, then you have almost-ready lunches for another time.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup Basil Pesto (recipe follows)
• 1/2 chopped purple onion
• 3 large chopped tomatoes
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• Pasta

Directions:
Combine ingredients and toss with pasta (angel hair works nicely).

Basil Pesto

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fresh basil
• 6 garlic cloves
• 1/3 cup walnuts / pine nuts
• 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
Combine all of these ingredients...

Over the past weeks, ProfHacker has provided tips on how we can take care of ourselves during the busiest times of the semester, this midterm insanity.  We have written about taking naps, balancing our lives, eating well, and trying a mind sweep.

Today another tip:  drinking some green tea.

Some years back, I lived in Japan, and drinking green tea was a daily habit.  I would have it in the morning with breakfast (which consisted of fish and rice), after meals, and in the afternoon while doing household chores.   It was especially welcomed during the cold winter months.  Many people believe that drinking green tea prolongs life by keeping some illnesses at bay; others thought that drinking cups of green tea each day could improve memory and learning ability.  Indeed, many doctors confirm that green tea can lower cholesterol and blood pressure, burn fat, fight heart disease, ...

Lifehacker has a recurring post, “What’s on your Desktop,” that is always fun and informative.  It is here you can find creative and interesting uses of desktop real estate.  Many of you certainly use some nifty tools on your computer desktops.  So, let’s see what you’ve got.  Let’s share!

Take a screen shot of your desktop, then tell us what you do with the information you find there.  Maybe you are using something that the rest of us can steal borrow use, too.

We’ll start with my desktop.  I use a double-monitor setup so my screen shot captures both screens.  The images are photos I took of the changing weather in South Texas a few weeks ago.  One night, the sunset was beautiful and red.  The next morning, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see very far.  I like the images; that’s the only reason they are there.

The rest of the desktop real estate is kept relatively clear.  ...

Poblano peppers are usually used in sauces, salsas, and soups.  These Mexican peppers are a cousin to the green bell pepper, but Poblano peppers are stronger.  When they are roasted, and combined with sweet corn, you have a lovely chowder that is good for cool or warm weather.

These usually mild peppers can also be quite spicy.  If you do not want to heat, be sure and remove the seeds and veins of the peppers, as that’s where the heat is found.

Roasted Poblano And Corn Chowder

Ingredients

• 3 or 4 poblano peppers, washed, halved and seeded
• 1 red bell pepper, washed, halved and seeded
  
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• salt and pepper
• 3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 6 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
• 1 1/2 pounds red-skinned potatoes, scrubbed, unpeeled, diced into small cubes
• 1 20oz can of creamed...

We’ve heard the bare-bones advice:  Just get the writing done.  Just do it. We’ve made the comparison about how being a writer is like being an athlete, about how we can have excuses why we don’t exercise and we have similar excuses about why we don’t write.  We’ve joined writer’s groups (face-to-face and online), in order to have...