More Dinners For This Week

Yikes, time to get back to dinner plans for the rest of the week. I'm still enjoying freshly roasted green chiles, still available from Full Circle Farms at the Boulder Farmers Market, plus the freezer-full I've already laid in. I'm therefore in the mood to go back to a favorite pasta that unfortunately doesn't have a link, called chile 'choke pasta. The gist of it is this: while your cut pasta of choice is cooking, saute chopped marinated artichoke hearts from a 6 oz jar with a reasonably small number of chopped roasted green chiles. Add 1/2 cup lowfat sour cream, a little olive oil, and a cup of grated parmesan to the mixture, blend it, then toss in your cooked pasta. Wow.

Then, as you may have guessed, there's a quick midweek reheat of something made on the weekend, this time our salmon chowder. When this week's specials came out, I kidded that with Sprouts' $5.99/lb deal on fresh coho, we'd simply eat it all week, no planning required. We're actually nearly halfway there, since salmon was on the grill Friday, and this is the second time we've had the chowder, thereby marking salmon's third appearance for the week. Get it while you can.

We still need a rice-based dish, so I'm thinking about the shrimp on sale at Sprouts for $3.99/lb, so that spells risotto. I have a favorite recipe for shrimp and butternut risotto, but I'm just not ready to go there yet (we have all winter for that). Since spinach is still available at the Farmers Market and of course can be gotten year-round in stores, I'm thinking shrimp risotto with baby spinach and basil from Bon Appetit. This will also help use up some basil from my outdoor pots, which are getting endangered by our chillier night temperatures.

Finally, midweek cooking shouldn't necessarily require any recipe at all, so a simple saute of pork chops ($2.99/lb at Sprouts), finished with a splash of balsamic or sherry vinegar, and microwaved "baked" potatoes will be on deck. We might get a little fancier with the side veggie, with something like green bean succotash from Bon Appetit (frozen edamame make a good substitute for the lima beans).

And that gets us through our planning for the week, as we slowly acknowledge the arrival of fall.