The Rest of This Week's Dinner Ideas

We're set on our dinner plans through today, but it's time to get going on the weekday plans. We've had sweet potatoes and a pasta dish already, so it's time to base something on rice. The asparagus that's only 97 cents a pound at Sprouts is still very much on my mind, so we'll go for asparagus and leek risotto with prosciutto from Bon Appetit. As usual, the prosciutto will come from the Whole Foods cheese and cold cut counter, where you can buy chunks of prosciutto for cooking at nearly half the price of the thinly sliced stuff.

Then, since we've made a big pot of sweet potato and sausage soup over the weekend, that will serve as a quickly reheated midweek dinner too, accompanied by a tossed salad and some bread. Nothing better than making dinner in about ten minutes.

It's about time for something with an Asian spin, and my basil pots need to be totally finished off because of this week's frost-threatening temperatures, and with pork stew meat on sale at Sunflower for just $2.79 a pound at Sunflower, that spells garlic pork with tomato and basil from Cooking Light. This usually gets served over brown rice, but since rice was already on the menu a couple of days ago, it will probably go over soba noodles instead, a delicious and very quick-cooking option.

Finally, to finish off the week's planning, we'll try a good-looking recipe from the current issue of Cooking Light, mushroom and sausage ragu with polenta, catching the chicken sausage that's on sale at both Sprouts and Sunflower before the sale ends Wednesday. Polenta can sound daunting but is actually really easy, and is readily available (and cheap) in the bulk aisle. It's interesting to note that the first recipe reviewer thinks there's a typo in the liquid called for in the recipe. Since I make polenta in a three to one ratio of liquid to polenta, I'd agree that the recipe looks too wet, and will adjust accordingly.

And that will get us through the week until next Friday's new set of plans.