Getting Started on This Week's Dinners

So we have at least one more shot at fresh, wild salmon, and at a tremendous price, $4.99/lb at Sprouts. We'll just have to do it, and with today so summer-like at 80 degrees or better, it will probably go on the grill, even though it gets dark so early these days. If you're tired of grilling, a delicious alternative is salmon, mustard greens, and potatoes with mustard-dill glaze from Bon Appetit. It's a fun concept, using the glaze for all three elements, and reinforcing the mustard theme with the mustard greens. It's also very easy.

Then to return to a more fall-like feel for the weekend (and to make a big pot of something to reheat midweek), we might go for sweet potato and sausage soup from Bon Appetit, fully cooking chicken sausage on sale at both Sprouts and Sunflower instead of the pre-cooked sausage in the recipe. Because of that switch, the soup might benefit from the addition of a little smoked paprika (but then, everything benefits from the addition of a little smoked paprika). I love soups like this that have a bunch of greens added in.

To finish off the weekend, I have an idea that sounds just right for the day. It's time for a pasta dish, and I want to enjoy some of our beautiful fall squash, but asparagus is also begging to be used, since it's 77 cents a pound at Sprouts. The solution will be an improvisation: pasta with winter squash and tomatoes from the New York Times, with asparagus pieces added to the tomato-squash mixture when the squash is nearly cooked. Bet that will make a lovely combination. Hope you stocked up on long-lasting organic winter squash when it was on sale last week. If not, if you don't mind conventional (you'll be peeling it anyway), you can pick that up at Sprouts this week for just 49 cents a pound.

And that will at least get us through the weekend.