With gluten friendly fare in big demand, San Diego's hippest restaurants are quickly educating themselves and developing delicious options. "Gluten friendly" has become a growing demand as approximately 1 in 133 people are said to have an allergy or sensitivity to gluten which requires eliminating wheat, barley and rye from the diet and it takes creativity to establish menu items without these ingredients.

If you are lucky enough to be in sunny San Diego for the weekend and feel like seeking some mischief, there is no better place to be than Pacific Beach. A popular beach area for tourists and beach lovers located north of downtown and south of La Jolla, Pacific Beach welcomes everyone and the locals have seen it all. It is a common occurrence to see a 50 person pub crawl most sunny weekends of the year. The attractiveness of this particular spot is the easy accessibility of all the bars and shops, and the positive energy of the weekenders and locals looking to have a great time.

Don't let those stories about the Sonoma "diet" fool you. If you're looking for a place to indulge your taste buds, there's nowhere better than the Sonoma Valley Wine Country.

Cliché as it may seem, "dinner and dessert," can mean a blessed merriment for your taste buds. For a low key night out in Chicago, one merely needs to begin with a cheerful appetite, a little cash, and maybe some elastic waist pants, (no calorie counting on this trip). On this evening in Chicago, we start and end our night on West Randolph.

Chocolate. One of life's greatest indulgences, it has long been a solution to feeling better, a way to "seal" a meal and used as an expression of love. Perhaps that is why it seems to go hand in hand with Valentine's Day. What better way to say ‘I love you' to your family than treating them to the chocolate buffet at Chicago's luxurious Peninsula Hotel?

"Ahh - Lapsang Souchong," says Brett, an enthusiastic tea salesman at Queen Anne Teacup Tea Market, who relishes my selection of a black Chinese smoked tea.

It's a small teahouse situated along Queen Anne Avenue that would probably be mistaken for a standard café were it not for the wall of metal drums that line the south wall and filled with hundreds of pounds of loose leaf tea. Brett takes the time to write out the name of the tea in Chinese script underneath its English name. A bit showy, but it's a nice touch and instills within me a sense of confidence.