Getting Started on This Week's Dinners

So much good stuff to work with this week, between the good sale prices happening in our stores and the bounty of local produce. Tonight and tomorrow look like our better grilling nights of the weekend, with Sunday looking possibly wet, so we'd better get grilling. We have some great prices locally on fresh, wild salmon this week (see the left margin for details), and with fresh sweet corn everywhere you turn, we'll fire up the grill tonight for grilled salmon with roasted corn relish from Cooking Light, which also celebrates the arrival this week of the first of the Hatch green chile crop from New Mexico. A quick alternative to the corn relish would be a fruit salsa using a Palisade peach and one of the 49 cent avocados from Sprouts. Sides could be anything: buttermilk mashed potatoes, potato packages done on the grill, grilled veggies, whatever. I hope to possibly stop by the Zweck family's market out by Longmont today, drawing inspiration from the organic veggies I'll find. I'll report further if I do in fact make it out there.

I'm hoping eggplant will be among the veggies I'll find (I know Munson's stand has the Japanese variety already), as with boneless, skinless chicken breasts $1.99/lb for a value pack at Sprouts, we'll be ready to fire up the grill again for grilled chicken and ratatouille from Bon Appetit. This is a great grilling recipe for summer's bounty, and it's equally good with regular rather than Japanese eggplant.

With thunderstorms potentially looming Sunday (and looking to do a big pot of something that will also make a quick midweek reheat), we'll head indoors for New Mexican chile verde from Cooking Light. This recipe will again celebrate this week's arrival of Hatch chilies from New Mexico, while also capitalizing on the pork loin roast that's an astonishing $1.88/lb at Sunflower, what a combo. I'm hoping somebody, either at tomorrow's Farmer's Market or at Whole Foods, will already be roasting chilies so I won't have to do it myself. Also, I bet the dish would be great with fresh corn kernels substituted for the hominy.

More planning yet to come.