More Dinners For This Week

We've gotten through the holiday, so it's time to get the rest of the week planned. We need a break from all the grilled burgers, ribs, and shrimp we had over the weekend, so I have a family request for twice-baked vegetarian potatoes to give the meat a rest tonight. I make my own invention, variously involving shallots or scallions, plain nonfat yogurt or lowfat sour cream, parsley, and maybe a bit of shredded cheese. I haven't tried them, but for a prepared version, Sprouts has them on sale in their deli for $2.99/lb through tomorrow.

So we've had one night's vegetarian break, then it will be back to grilling, this time with a surprise gift of some very nice Coleman ribeyes. We have lots of leftover salads from yesterday to go along. For a fresh addition, I might add a tomato and peach salad while organic romas are 88 cents a pound at Sunflower through tomorrow, and I have some peaches left from the Vitamin Cottage sale. This is a real harbinger of summer, as it's the first time I'll invoke one of Mark Bittman's wonderful series on 101 things for summer, the tomato and peach salad being number two in his 101 simple salads for the season.

Then, to get away from all these potatoes and salads, it's time to move on to a rice dish. I'd hoped to get in one more recipe using pea shoots before they're done for the season, and had my eye on chicken and shitake stir fry with peas and pea tendrils over rice, but that idea met with resistance from the family. Guess last week's two dinners involving pea shoots were enough, and perhaps I should have trimmed the stems more than I did as they approach fin de saison. Will look forward to next year and experimenting with pea shoots the moment they hit the market, presumably a little more tender.

Looking for another rice dish, I've liked the nice big size (26/30 count) of the shrimp on sale for $4.97/lb at Sunflower through tomorrow, so I'll pick up another two pound frozen bag for one more dinner plus a future use. If I'm lucky, the stand at Cure Organic Farm will have spinach in stock (if not, store-bought will be fine), as we'll have shrimp risotto with baby spinach and basil from Bon Appetit. Interesting that this recipe pairs seafood and cheese, and comments that Italians actually do this, contrary to popular belief. I never saw it happen while there, although I find it usually a delicious combination, so I wonder just how prevalent the pairing might actually be in Italy. Anyone with experience of cheese in a seafood dish there?

And that will do us for the rest of the week.