Food Fetishes and Single Digit Temperatures

Ok - I don't know what kind of fetish I have that requires me to take pictures of food, but I seem to do it a lot. Tonight, we took my dad and our friend Leigh out for birthday dinners at Maggiano's Little Italy. Dad's birthday was January 1 and Leigh's was January 2.

It actually started when Leigh saw how big my dad's helping of lasagna was...she said, "Too bad you didn't bring your camera." And I was like, "Oh! I always have my camera." It was decided that I would take a picture of Dad's dinner to memorialize the elephant sized portion for posterity.

But first I had to take a picture of Mike's beef dish. I can't remember what it's called, but it looked really good to me - even though I don't really eat meat. Weird.

But here is my dad's monster lasagna from the top view...

and from the side. It's nearly as tall as his water glass!

Once I got started, I couldn't stop. Here's a picture of the remains of my blue cheese chopped salad.

And the gnocchi in vodka cream sauce that we shared. *drool*


A picture of our friend Michelle (aka MuShu) - I caught her with a bite in her mouth. I was going to retake the picture, but that chick sitting behind her kept shooting us dirty looks and I didn't feel like "throwing down" with her at the restaurant. I just stopped taking pictures for a little while.
We took a group shot when we got outside. From left to right - Rachael, Mike, me, Leigh, MuShu and my dad. This is a terrible picture of Leigh - she looks so much younger than she appears in this picture. It's sad really, because Leigh always refuses to have her picture made, but she agreed to a group shot for her birthday. And then it turns out like that. Sad. I weep.

Here's Leigh again - she's laughing under all that hair. I call this one "Leigh Keeps Warm During Chicago Winter." Leigh's in her element during the winter time. I, like Leigh, prefer cold weather to super hot summer weather...but sometimes it's hard for me to remember why when the temperature dips into single digits. Do you know how warm it was today? 4. Actually, the temperature was so low that I'm grammatically required to spell it out rather than using the number. Four. F-O-U-R. Sheesh.
But - as they say about many places in the midwest. If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes. They're talking rain showers and 50+ temps in a few days.