Weekday Dinner Ideas

Time to get going on dinner plans for tomorrow through Thursday. For a Monday night dinner, I'm thinking about the chicken tenders that are on sale at Sprouts for $1.97 a pound, and with organic broccoli just 99 cents a pound at Sunflower, that spells chicken and broccoli stir-fry from Bon Appetit, served over brown rice. If you want to make your life even easier, skip the recipe altogether and pick up a package of the Seapoint Farms Oriental edamame veggie blend that's on sale at Sunflower for $1.99 each, and use that with your stir-fried chicken. The blend is full of all kinds of great veggies, including baby corn, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and of course, edamame. It helps if you remember to let the package defrost in advance, but also works straight out of the freezer. Healthy convenience!

Then on to Tuesday, when we should laissez les bons temps rouler for Mardi Gras. But it's in the middle of a busy week, so how are we going to find time to celebrate? With our traditional reheat of something large that was made over the weekend, which in this case is the seafood and turkey sausage gumbo! I ask you, is that good planning or what? Whole Foods is the source for the sides, with organic leaf lettuce $1 each for the salads, and their fabulous baguettes just 99 cents each.

For Wednesday, it will be time for some pasta, and also time for something vegetarian. I was bummed to find out that the Boulder Sunflower does not carry the smoked mozzarella that appears in this week's ad, as it reminded me of a dish I haven't made in quite some time, orecchiette boscaiola. There are some recipes for it out on the web, but the version I make is a replication of the dish I had eons ago at a restaurant in New York's Little Italy (back when that was the place to go for the best Italian food). It consists of the cooked orecchiette (or other cut pasta) tossed in a sauce made from wild mushrooms, smoked mozzarella, and tomatoes, flavored with a bit of garlic and basil. Yum. I was so inspired by the thought of it, I paid full price for the smoked mozzarella at Whole Foods, which does carry it, thank heavens.

Finally, to finish off this week's round of planning, for Thursday we'll go for a version of spicy turkey burgers from Bon Appetit, using the ground chicken breast that's on sale at Sprouts through Wednesday for $2.97 a pound (note the need to buy it by then) instead of the ground turkey. I like to serve these open-faced on toast instead of on buns, and the Ezekiel breads on sale at Sunflower for $2.50 make a great choice.

And that will do it until next Friday's round of planning.