Weekend Dinner Ideas

Unlike last week, I'm more enthused about what kinds of dinners to whip up with this week's natural foods sales. For starters, I just saw an intriguing recipe in the current August issue of Bon Appetit that fits perfectly with what's available this week, grilled salmon with quick blueberry pan sauce. It sounds wacky enough that I have to try it, and with the sauce kept on the side, we'll still have a nice grilled salmon if the sauce isn't a hit. Sprouts has fresh wild coho for $7.99/lb this week and they also have big 18 oz packages of blueberries for $1.88 each. I usually don't eat conventional berries and will check out organic prices elsewhere, but the organics tend to run so high, I might just opt for the conventionals at this special price.

Turning our grilled salmon into quite the dinner, we'll start with an appetizer of some of the stuffed clams or scallops that are just $1 each at Sprouts today through Sunday. The salmon will be accompanied by yams of some variety, either grilled as spears or mashed with a touch of orange juice. To add some green color, we'll have green bean and radish salad, also from Bon Appetit, since green beans have come into season and organic radish bunches are just 88 cents each at Sunflower.

Whew, that was a fairly elaborate dinner, so for a hot Saturday (95 again), we'll just throw something else on the grill, maybe the chicken breasts that are on sale, with grilled pineapple or peaches for dessert. Pineapples are just $1 each at Sprouts' three-day sale, and Palisade peaches are arriving everywhere ($1.50/lb at Lucky's).

Next, since this past week's corn chowder with bacon was such a success, we'll turn to a different spin, sweet corn chowder with hot-smoked salmon this week. For maximum freshness, the corn will come from one of my favorite farmstands, either Cure Organic or Munson's (Munson's has become pretty widely available in stores too, but I'd bet not as fresh as from the stand), and the smoked salmon will be from Sprouts, where wild smoked sockeye 4 oz packages are $3.99 this week. Big salad on the side, plus a nice fresh loaf of bread from the Whole Foods Bakehouse, yum.

That at least gets us through the weekend, more planning yet to come.