Weekday Dinner Ideas

Let's get moving on planning for dinners, starting with tomorrow night. Thinking about the asparagus that Sunflower has for $1.27 a pound, we'll opt for a favorite rice dish, asparagus and leek risotto with prosciutto from Bon Appetit. Remember that Whole Foods, at least at the Pearl Street store, has cooking prosciutto at nearly half the cost of the stuff that's paper-thin sliced in front of you, which isn't what you'd want for this dish anyway.

As always, there's a reheat of something big made over the weekend, and in this case, it will be our corned beef and cabbage for Tuesday. I suppose we could wait until St. Patrick's Day proper on Thursday to do this, but I don't like to leave leftovers sitting in the fridge that long.

To finish off our asparagus fling on the last day of Sunflower's $1.27 a pound sale, we'll look to another pasta dish, penne with asparagus, spinach and bacon from Cooking Light. Although meats like bacon and prosciutto appear in lots of our meals, they are always in small amounts (2 bacon slices in this case), adding a great flavor boost without the downsides of too much meat.

Finally, for St. Patrick's Day proper on Thursday, we'll do our own interpretation of Irish fare, suitable for midweek cooking, by stuffing baked (read microwaved) russet potatoes with a smoked salmon and scallions or shallots. Potatoes, salmon, how Irish, yet how quick. For a side, I'll grab some of the organic kale that's $1.50 a bunch at Whole Foods through Tuesday, and the combination of potatoes and kale almost evokes another Irish classic, colcannon.

And that get's us through this week's planning.