Friday, September 17, 2010

Getting Started on This Week's Dinners

Time to get going with some ideas for this weekend's dinners. I'm going to continue to enjoy grilled fresh, wild salmon for as long as the season permits, so that's what will be on deck for tonight. I snagged some gorgeous Columbia River king salmon on the last day of Sprouts' $9.99/lb sale Wednesday, but King Soopers is advertising coho for $6.99/lb this week as an alternative. Also, the fish guy at Sprouts said the Columbia River should remain available after the sale, selling at $14.99/lb this week, still an impressive price, especially since I've seen it sell for $25/lb at a store that shall go unnamed. This salmon is so beautiful, it really shouldn't be tinkered with. The farthest I might go, aside from a squeeze of lemon, would be to try something like grilled salmon with lime butter sauce from Gourmet magazine, not really messing with the fish at all. It doesn't sound like end of summer fare, but Sunflower has asparagus this week for $1.77/lb, and we can make it summer fare by putting it on the grill, too. (Preferably crosswise in a basket, so they don't all wind up in the fire.)

Saturday's temperatures will be a little cooler, and with whole frying chickens just 67 cents a pound, it's tempting to pop one in the oven to roast, along with some cut up veggies like the organic yams and baby carrots also on sale at Sunflower ($1.49/lb and $1.50 a bag, respectively). But that feels just too much like winter, and I'm not ready to go there yet. Instead, we'll continue our roasted green chile celebration with a spin on spicy turkey chile verde with hominy and squash, substituting a few of the roasted chiles I've picked up at the Farmers Market and Whole Foods for the fresh poblano called for in the recipe. Note that fall is creeping in here anyway, with our first appearance of butternut squash in a recipe. Whole Foods is running a particularly good deal on organic butternut (also acorn and spaghetti squash) at 99 cents a pound through the 28th. Easy to find cheap conventional hard squash these days, but a good price on organic doesn't happen so often.

Enough of our hint of fall. For Sunday, we'll be back on the grill, probably with the steaks that are all 40% off at Sprouts' "all natural steak round-up" sale. Packages of diced organic yams ($1.49/lb on sale at Sunflower) will also go on the grill. To continue our end of summer celebration, we'll have a side that was spectacularly successful on its first try a few weeks ago, tomato and corn salad with marjoram from Bon Appetit. (In my spin, bits of fresh mozzeralla sub for the feta, and fresh basil subs for the marjoram, making it kind of a caprese with corn.) Still looking for every chance I can get to enjoy fresh corn from Munson Farm.

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

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