gnat has more visitors

and (more) more cupcakes, which cara and i got to reward ourselves for the rapid progress we've made in apartment arranging. (total bs. we still don't have a couch, a table, chairs, a vegetable peeler...)

we tried the goat fig merlot and salted caramel:

the goat fig merlot had a slightly cheesy cake with fig filling and red wine tinged frosting. the caramel had caramel flavored cake, caramel flavored frosting, and caramel oozing out of the center. go figure.

the next day (yeah, i'm pretty ashamed about this) i took eric, laurena, and maya, who are in town for a visit, into more to show them the ridiculous selection. we walked out with MORE more cupcakes. this time we went with cookies and cream and gin and juice.

i have no idea how or why anyone would make a gin flavored cupcake, but they did it.

i also learned a valuable lesson, which is that if you walk into the shop 15 minutes before closing and buy one cupcake you will probably walk out with a few free ones to keep it company.

we brunched at orange restaurant, home of frushi, fruit sushi, which is as silly as it sounds. the flavors of the day were pineapple with blueberry rice and kiwi grape with coconut melon rice.

they were significantly more difficult to eat with chopsticks than actual sushi.

despite my usual dislike of sweet breakfast fare, this week's pancake special at orange was too intriguing to pass up. four sets of silver dollar pancakes, each with a different combination of citrus, herb, and cheese.

with the exception of the grapefruit cottage cheese, these were very tasty, but they did leave me aching for eggs over-easy and fried potatoes. lesson learned. salty breakfast food is the only breakfast food for me.

we spent the day at the lincoln park zoo and the wizard of oz park, and once we had worked up an appetite we stopped for pizza. yeah, more pizza. this time the culprit was lou malnati's in lincoln park.

we chose to enjoy our pizza al fresco in a nearby park while sipping on a communal two liter of diet coke. it was the ultimate in classy dining.

even if it wasn't, the pizza was still delicious.

also notable this week was my first taco tuesday since leaving california. i was so excited that i had tacos not once but twice at two establishments across the street from each other in the course of one evening. i'm sensing a theme here.