Friday Favorites

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

NYE lunch

When we lived in Dallas, one of our favorite ways to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon was a late lunch of oysters, shrimp cocktail and other appetizers while sitting at the bar at the McCormick & Schmick’s located in the nice mall near our house, then a stroll through the mall for a visit to the Apple Store for Dan and Anthropologie for me.  We were pretty bummed when the Dallas restaurant closed in 2012.  So we were thrilled to discover that our local mall here in Chicagoland has a McCormick & Schmick’s, and we had an amazing lunch there on New Year’s Eve.  We especially enjoyed a new-to-us menu item (with a delightfully quirky name) — Shrimp Kisses.  Broiled shrimp wrapped in bacon with a little pepper jack cheese in the middle, served over corn relish and topped with fried onion strings.  Yes, yes and yes.

Happy shopper

Although the mall here is open-air (and therefore not quite ideal for strolling when temps are in the single digits), the Anthropologie is just around the corner from McCormick & Schmick’s, and there is a little warming station / seating area along the way.  It was a little too cold that day to linger long, but I see some Dan-time in one of those chairs in the less-frigid future (June perhaps?) while I get my shop on.

Binge-worthy

Happily, our local mall also has an Apple Store, where we procured one of the greatest inventions for television addicts like us — the Apple TV device.  It basically allows you to put whatever content that is on your iTunes account onto your television.  So, for example, if you happened to be bored with current TV shows and decided to maybe see what all the prior buzz was about regarding the show “Scandal,” you could just order the first episode on iTunes, then watch it on TV.  And, for instance, if you decided you really liked the show Scandal and wanted to watch more episodes, then you could order the entire first season, possibly binge-watch 5 episodes on New Year’s Day, then go ahead and order season 2 to watch at your leisure, slowing down to savor the episodes until season 3 will be available for purchase on iTunes.  But that’s just one example — there’s lots of other things you can do with Apple TV too.

Boots with the fur

If you would have told me 3 months ago that I would be wearing (and loving) faux fur-lined boots, I would have thought you were hilarious.  And if you would have told me that I would be wearing them while living in the Chicago area, I would have thought you were hilarious AND possibly deranged.  Yet here we are, embracing our new adventure, fur and all.

Cheers 2014

Happy New Year to all!  We are excited for all this new year has in store (although we would prefer it not involve any life-altering changes, at least for the first 6 months or so, thankyouverymuch), and we wish you and yours health, prosperity, joy and laughter in 2014.  And warmth.