dinner inspiration

Happy Tuesday, friends! I thought I'd do another dinner inspiration (or lunch) post since so many of you enjoyed the one I wrote last week. 

I feel like I have this new appreciation for food all of a sudden, and I only want good food. I've always been like this in a sense, and because I enjoy good food, I enjoy cooking. I've never loved chain restaurants and these days I don't like eating out all that much, because the quality of food usually never matches the high price. We do have a few places we like to visit for date nights, one is a chain and the only chain I currently like (Longhorn) and the other is a local place called Jim's Grille. We always go to Jim's for our anniversary and we usually visit Longhorn once a year.

We also have some other local places we like as well—my favorite Mexican place is called La Perla Tapatia and for fast food that's similar to Moe's we like to go to Booya's. They also have great burgers and cheese fries. Our other favorite burger place is Huey's, but they have kabobs, fish baskets, chicken tenders and other bar type food. And they're known for their bar and live music. We don't visit for that part of it, but it's a great hangout place that my sons love going to. They were just there for the Super Bowl Sunday night and Graham is thinking of getting his bartending license to work a few shifts there each week. He heard they make great money doing that and he really wants to buy a house.

I said all of that to say that I've combined a few of my hobbies lately—reading and cooking. I love this particular author who always incorporates food into her books. I feel like I've been trying more things recently because of her books and I have some ideas stashed away of recipes to make when the weather gets warm again. I also feel like I always need to put out a cheese plate to snack on before dinner. I have done this several times recently and that idea came from her. She does something really cool in her books that I love the idea of and want to do sometime soon—I'd love to offer a main course and then have friends come over and bring side dishes. Doesn't that sound like a fun edition of a girls night in? In her books, the female characters do this once a month. ❤

That being said, here are a couple of things I made on Monday.

I love making quiche! It's easy and it's very flavorful and good to keep and eat on all week. These are his and hers—for mine, I added two cheese, spinach, arthichoke hearts and diced green onion. For theirs I added two cheeses, bacon, turkey and diced green onion. All you do is add the ingredients of your choice chopped up into the frozen pie crust, then beat 3 eggs, 1 and 1/4 cup of half and half or milk and salt and pepper to taste and add that over the other ingredients into the pie crust and bake at 375 for 35-50 minutes. I made two at once, so one took about 40 minutes and the other took 50, but to see if they're done, insert a knife into the middle and if it comes out clean, it's done.

The second thing I made are these chocolate-peanut butter no-bake cookies. Mine didn't turn out quite this pretty because I was out of vanilla and I bought the wrong kind of oats. They don't look like much, but they are delicious. The ingredients are two cups of sugar, one stick of butter and 1/4 cup of milk. Melt all that and then add in one cup of peanut butter, 1 tsp of vanilla and three cups of oats while on the stove. Combine and add in one cup of chocolate chips off the burner, spoon onto wax paper or foil sprayed with Pam and let harden.

Other things we're eating this week are as follows:

Todd and I are going out tomorrow night, but I'll make a pork tenderloin and oven roasted potatoes for the guys here to eat dinner. Wednesday we will eat something leftover and we'll probably eat either something I make that is Mexican inspired or another charcuterie board type dinner like what I made for Todd and me for the Super Bowl and already shared a picture of.

What are you eating this week? I'd love to hear from you on this! I said this last week, but I am always inspired by what other people eat and have for dinner. I hope this gives you some ideas for your busy week! Thanks for reading, friends. Love to all!