Lyon Porter opened a four-room bed and breakfast in Brooklyn in 2014 and an eight-room boutique hotel in Nashville in 2016, both of which are frequently featured in travel and lifestyle publications and host celebrity guests in the environments that urban chic Instagram dreams are made of. The former hockey player shares his path from real estate to design passion project and what it takes to open successful boutique accommodations.

My family enjoys having a pre-seder cocktail as we wait for everyone to arrive. While kosher Manischewitz wine made from Concord grapes is traditional at Passover, the flavor is a bit sweet for some. As the family chef and mixologist, I decided to invent a mixed drink that would incorporate some of the Manishewitz wine that we had on hand.

To me, food is more than just fuel; it represents the identity of many places and ties people to their roots.

I was born and raised in India and grew up in a vegetarian household with 15 members of my extended family under one roof. Cooking daily meals for so many was a way of life; it was the DNA of my family.

When ICE alum Chef Guy Vaknin (Culinary, ’07) opened his New York City restaurant, Beyond Sushi, in 2012, neither he nor his menu were vegan. “I didn’t know much about plant-based food. I was just trying to create a healthy concept that was a little bit different,” Guy says. “But I got educated by my customers.”

Long before California’s farm-to-table movement and Alice Waters, there was Korean temple food: a cuisine that dates back thousands upon thousands of years with veganism at the foundation for religious reasons.

A medical student producer for "The Dr. Oz Show," Nate Wood (Culinary, '18) combined his interests in media, food, medicine and cooking thanks to weekend class schedules at the Institute of Culinary Education.

Chef Olivia went from pre-med studies at Columbia, where she earned her bachelor’s in neuroscience and behavior, to working with vegetables at The Mercer Kitchen and Momofuku Ssäm Bar after completing the Natural Gourmet Institute’s (NGI) Chef’s Training Program. It turned out brain science had a lot to do with how we consume food.

Why does food lose its flavor when you have a stuffy nose? Why do sommeliers smell wine before tasting it? And why do the smells of certain foods and drinks — hot coffee, fresh baked bread, toasted nuts — trigger our cravings? The answer to all of this is found in the relationship between and the science behind smell and taste.

Now that we’ve made it through March and winter has come to an end, the start of the New Year seems like a distant memory. As resolutions begin to fade, use this time of the year to check in on the small health habits you’ve adopted to improve your overall well being.