Chi Town

So I spent most of the weekend visiting my lovely older brother (this was taken at his favorite restaurant in Chinatown). He lives in downtown Chicago and every time I visit we always go exploring in a different part of the city. This trip took us to the Wicker Park area that just has some pretty darn fabulous shops (there were tons of cute retail shops and I picked up this adorable red pea coat, love it!) along with great eateries and coffee shops. We stopped at the Worm Hole, which is a throw back to the '80's, complete with an original Nintendo system (that we of course played for a few hours) and all kinds of memorabilia from the time.

When you first walk in the door you are immediately greeted by the car from the Back to the Future movies (which is evidently called the De Lorean). Just a bit of fun :)

Our next adventure took us to Chicago's Chinatown. We had a fabulous lunch (see 1st picture ;) followed by a bit of window shopping and of course pictures by our Zodiac animal.

I have a tradition. Every time I visit my brother I always bring some sort of barcookie. Sometimes there's beer or cheese that also make the trip, but there is always a pan of barcookies. I think it started when I was still in high school and I would always be asked to make said cookies, usually sometime late at night after we'd been talking on one of his visits home. I have an old standby that I usually make, it's just an adaptation from the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe, but recently I had stumbled across this AMAZING recipe and had to try it. Let me tell you, it was pretty great, uber sweet, obviously, but oh so good.

S'more Cookie Bars

They are definitely now on my go to list, especially for fall events, after all, who doesn't love s'mores? And a whole pan of them, come on!

Alright, so that's what I've been up to lately, cooking and traveling, surprise, surprise :) I hope you are all enjoying your week, it's almost halfway through (yep, it's going to be a long one).