The Friday Five, 1/26/24: 5 things I've been up to this week

This week has seemed really long so I'm glad it's Friday. 

Espresso martini and mocktail at Syndicate, Ferndale
Espresso martini and mocktail at Syndicate, Ferndale

What I've been up to this week:

  1. Dining out. Last Saturday, my fiance, parents, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory in Novi, as a makeup birthday lunch (on January 13, we had received all that snow the day before and the roads were bad). We also stopped by the House of Falafel, in Farmington, for a free Yelp pickup; I had never been before, and it was very good, especially the chicken shawarma. We bought some pita chips and garlic to go, too, and that was also very good.
    On Sunday, two friends and I met up at Miss Kim, in Ann Arbor, for Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, which ends today; that was only the second time I have been there, and everything was very good. On Wednesday night, after seeing a movie, I stopped by Shake Shack in Troy for a free burger; the T-Mobile Tuesday app was giving a free ShackBurger with purchase, so I threw in some fries too, making my total about $4 (would've been $10-11 with the burger!).
    Last night, my neighbor and I went to see Wicked in Detroit, and beforehand we went to Syndicate in Ferndale, which was my first time there. Definitely a hipster place but everything was delicious, including the mocktail I had above, which was pretty interesting—it had numbing (flower? pepper?) on the side, so they advised me to take a sip of the drink, take a lick of that and wait 30 seconds, then try the drink again. It made the drink sweeter-tasting and also felt a little spicy on my lips and tongue. The food was also good—I had a London broil (steak) with potatoes, and they came with butter topped with (sea?) salt, it tasted like. 
  2. Seeing Wicked at the Detroit Opera House. Also yesterday, I went to see Wicked at the Opera House, and it will be there until February 18th (see the details here at my blog post). This was my second time seeing it, but the first time was 2009 when I was in London, so it had been a while. It was a lot of fun, especially if you're a Wizard of Oz fan, and I recommend it. 
  3. Seeing movies. I saw The Beekeeper at the theater on Wednesday, and it was pretty good, albeit your typical Jason Statham fare; I'd give it 3.5/5 stars. I also saw Wish on digital this week, which I gave 3/5 stars to, and you can visit my blog post to win a digital copy (there will be three winners!).
  4. Cooking. We had EveryPlate this week, and although we still have a chicken stirfry meal to cook, so far we made a melted mushroom sandwich/panini, which was good although I wanted it to be better, and pork chops with apricot sauce, which was pretty good. Next week is HelloFresh and the menu looks great. 
  5. Trying to plan engagement photos. And yes, we already had engagement photos done in Boston, BUT our photographer includes a complimentary one-hour session. She's based in Cincinnati so unless we want to pay a travel fee, we will have to go down there ... my fiance has some friends there too so we were trying to coordinate it so that we could see them, but it looks like none of the weekends are aligning. Most likely this will take place in March sometime. 
Wicked at Detroit Opera House

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