This is my norm

PF Changs is one of our favorite nice restaurants around here, but we don’t go very often because its not that close to us and we are stinking to our budget!

Tonight right before I started in on preparing our dinner, I had a thought about PF Changs Mongolian Beef and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I changed my whole meal plan and in an hour we were feasting on some pretty delish close-seconds to eating right in the restaurant.

Here are the recipes I used and I recommend you try them!

http://www.food.com/recipe/p-f-changs-mongolian-beef-66121

http://thaifood.about.com/od/quickeasythairecipes/r/stirfriedveggie.htm

I also made some brown fried rice with egg in it.

When I woke up yesterday I knew immediately that the weather had changed. My mom told me I should have gone into meteorology because my sinuses are never wrong! My scratchy throat lead to this morning waking up with nasal congestion and a headache from pressure.

It also lead to my tummy desiring something substantial for breakfast. Southern comfort food at its best. I mentally went through the ingredients in my pantry thinking what can I make that we don’t usually make? Maybe something new that the girls will love….what could it be?

I googled oatmeal recipes…I’ve had a tube of quaker oats ready to be finished out. Nothing really sparked my interest. Then Pioneer Woman Cooks popped in my head. She has some fabo recipes and I regularly find myself drooling on my keyboard while looking at some of them.  The first thing I found was a recipe for some Pumpkin Spice Muffins. Perfect! That sounded delish. But, I was fresh out of pumpkin puree. After all, it is spring now. Pumpkin is a stapel that I keep on hand through the fall and winter and then forget about until that time again the next year.  ( I added it to my grocery list so we can have some pumpkin deliciousness tomorrow)

I browsed her recipes some more and then, I found it. The perfect comfort food breakfast that wouldn’t take and hour to prepare and I was pretty sure my kiddos would love it and think it was fun.  So I whipped up some Egg-in-the-holes and they were EGGcelent! New family fave!  And it also helped that I had a super cute “Little Chef” to help. She called out each time I cracked the egg into the toast “Egg in da hole”

The other day my mom called and told me to turn on my Food Network channel quickly, I did and saw a fabulous Roasted artichoke salad being prepared. My taste buds literally started watering, so I went online and checked out the recipe from the Barefoot Contessa and made it today for lunch. BJ is not a fan of artichokes so he picked something else for lunch and I figured that was a good time to try out this recipe.

The girls and I loved it!! So great for a light lunch, plus it had so many hidden healthy veggies in it. I also added some sun-dried tomatos. It was a hit! I think it would be great as a salad at a party or shower.

Try it and let me know what you think!