Ignoring Most of the Menu: Gems at Quality Italian

Quality Italian's baby kale salad 

When I was invited to lunch at Quality Italian, I was not expecting a great meal. Techlicious held its annual CTATravel Lunch & Learn at this Italian steakhouse and, well, vegetarian.

Shrimp cocktail 

But I was pleasantly surprised. There was plenty for a non-steak eater to savor at this lovely restaurant.

Each table got a huge shrimp cocktail platter. The jumbo shrimp had cocktail sauce, chipotle mayo or lemon and the shrimp were utterly fresh and perfectly cooked.

Corn gnocchi

There was also a lovely baby kale salad, with pickled red onions. The colorful salad was devoured by all the meat eaters and vegetarians at my table.

Brussels Sprouts

We also had warm bread, with fruity olive oil for dipping. The pretty sausage and pepper garlic toast was not for me, but the others enjoyed it.

For my entree, I had corn gnocchi with pistachios. The sweet corn tasted of mid-summer, even though it is still technically late spring.

Steak fries

We had Brussels Sprouts Calabrese, roasted till crispy. And the Tuscan fries were really steak fries, properly salty and crunchy. I'm not a ketchup person, but I appreciated the Sir Kensington ketchup served with the fries.

Chocolate cannoli for dessert

Dessert was a chocolate cannoli with pistachio gelato. Yum!

Note: I was a guest of Techlicious at its #CTATravel Lunch & Learn event. I was not compensated for this post, but I was sated.

Travel Essentials: Headphones & Videos

Sony True Wireless Sports Headphones

Back in the not so distant past, travel entertainment meant an assortment of DVDs, a portable player and clunky headphones. My kids had cute pink DVD players, which then morphed into DVD slots on laptops.

Look at all the content you can access from the Roku streaming stick

Now, my Mac doesn't even have a DVD player and sometimes I want to watch a movie or binge a TV show on a long layover or airport delay.

At the CTA Travel Lunch & Learn Event, hosted by Techlicious, I got a first look at a portable Roku streaming stick. It lets you access content from your Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu account when you travel. You can also use it at home, but this little stick is perfect for travel.

The Ashley Chloe Helix Cuff (and my bracelet)

Fashion AND Function

Ashley Chloe showed off fashionable bracelets with Bluetooth headphones hidden inside. The Helix Cuff is a fashionable way to carry headphones. And the cuff comes in different color combos - black on black, for the inveterate New Yorker.

There is also black with gold, black with silver, white with gold or white with silver (for the Hamptons, of course). The cuffs are about $99.

Fashionable running

I rarely run with headphones because they always pop out. Sony has new wireless earbuds that stay in. And they are sweat resistant. They come in black, white, pink and yellow. The pink coordinates well with  the rose gold of an iPhone.

Best of all, the Sony True Wireless Sports Headphones are noise canceling, with an ambient sound mode. So at the gym, you can eliminate extraneous noise from, say, your husband grunting on the next mat.

Sony noise canceling headphones

But on a long run, you can keep the ambient sound so you hear a car or bike approaching.

The Sony buds retail for $179.99.


Discloser: I received a Roku stick courtesy of the Consumer Technology Association. I was not compensated for this post.