Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

My aunt, uncle and cousins from Oklahoma have an annual tradition of driving to the Houston area to spend the New Year’s holiday with family there.  For several years now, they have stopped at the Bavarian Grill in Plano for lunch along the way, which just happens to be about 15 minutes from our house.  This year, they invited us to join them and we’re so glad they did!  The food was amazing (I had the jí¤ger schnitzel with spí¤tzel, pictured above), the company even better, and we all wondered why we had never met up for this annual lunch before.  Suddenly, a new tradition is born.  Can’t wait for next year’s feast, Levy’s!

A big bowl of Cajun BBQ shrimp and a loaf of crusty bread hit the spot on a cold evening.  We like this recipe, which is also really quick and easy to make.  If you don’t have access to fresh shrimp, frozen “EZ Peel” shrimp will work fine — just be sure to use the big ones and leave the shells on when you cook them.

My brother J has always been a creative guy, and one of his artistic outlets is origami.  We spent Christmas at a lakehouse with my side of the family this year, and my brother spent a bit of his down-time creating a little family of giraffes out of colorful paper.  I snagged this one (named George) and put him in a shadow-box frame to hang on our picture gallery wall.  Thanks J!

We continued our New Year’s Eve tradition of staying in and cooking something a little more fancy or elaborate than our usual dinners — this year with braised short ribs (post coming soon.)  The melt-in-your-mouth tender ribs in the silky, richly sophisticated sauce made for a perfectly celebratory year-end meal.  And don’t even get us started on the leftovers, which we served over egg noodles with a little Worcestershire sauce, channeling my grandmother’s beef and noodles.  So good.

We’re not big on year-end wrap-ups or new year resolutions, but we do appreciate the fresh-start, clean-slate feelings that come with a new calendar, and we look forward to seeing what 2013 has in store.  Happy New Year!