The Rest of This Week's Dinner Ideas

Hmm, I came up with these ideas before I knew today was the start of National Pizza Week, so there might be a pizza rearrangement somewhere herein (although we'll still have Friday or Saturday to fit in that pizza).

To start with tomorrow evening, we always have a reprise of something big made over the weekend, and with the way this snow is coming down, I think the reprise will happen earlier than usual. This week, it's last night's chicken posole from Food and Wine magazine, which was absolutely delicious. I like the extra veggie concept, with the fresh salsa to be stirred in, along with garnishes like radishes.

Then, assuming the roads have been cleared and more groceries are in the house by Tuesday, we'll turn to a seasonal favorite, winter squash and pork stir-fry, a Bittman recipe from the New York Times. I prefer a leaner cut than the pork shoulder the recipe calls for, perhaps the pork tenderloin that's on sale at both Sprouts ($2.99/lb) and Sunflower ($3.99/lb) this week. Serving this over brown rice will give us a rice dish for the week.

Then I'm thinking a good way to finish the rest of the tortillas that accompanied the posole earlier in the week would be to use them to wrap up sirloin steak with tomato and cilantro sauce from Bon Appetit, a headily fragrant concoction. The beef stir fry on sale this week at Sunflower for $3.99/lb would do just fine in place of the sirloin. Organic cilantro is also on sale there this week at $1 a bunch, and they usually have the best price in town on organic tomatoes ($1.99/lb for romas when last seen on Friday).

To finish off the plan through Thursday, we're looking at Boursin-stuffed turkey burgers from Gourmet magazine, using either the ground turkey breast ($4.49/lb) or ground chicken breast ($2.99/lb) that are both on sale at Sprouts through Wednesday (have to be careful to pick it up in time). Baked potatoes from the organic russets that are $1.99 for a five pound bag at Sprouts will go on the side.

And that's the plan for the rest of the week, at least until I learned this is National Pizza Week, and it also started snowing like crazy. We'll see how things develop.