Weekend Dinner Ideas

Dinner keeps coming around, so it's time to get some plans going. As we ease into spring, I'm torn between jumping into it full blast, or savoring our remaining days of comfy casseroles and chowders filled with winter veggies. For tonight, I'm thinking about staying in winter mode, using the wild caught haddock that's on sale at Sprouts for New England seafood chowder, a veggie-packed wonder from Bon Appetit that includes both butternut squash and kale. I cut way back on the bacon, or use a veggie bacon as a healthier alternative. Salad and a hefty loaf of bread fresh from the Whole Foods bakery will go on the side.

For tomorrow, let's swing into spring by checking out the first of the season fresh halibut that King Soopers has for $16.99 a pound. I don't get there often, but I've had quite good luck with their fresh seafood. The halibut would be best on the grill, opening our spring grilling season, but with the winds we've been having recently, it will more likely wind up indoors on a grill pan or under the broiler. For a side, I'm looking forward to trying a new recipe from the current issue of Cooking Light, roasted asparagus with browned butter. (I'm not sure if we have Meyer lemons in the area right now. Regular lemon, maybe mixed with a little orange juice to make it Meyer-like, would also probably work.) Sprouts has a good price on conventional asparagus at $1.88 a pound, but since I'll be at King Soopers anyway for the halibut, I'll go for their excellent price on organic asparagus, just $2.50 a pound. Organic asparagus, when available, usually runs in the $5 or $6 a pound range, and Sprouts currently has it on sale for $3.99 a pound, so you can see how good the King Soopers price is.

To finish off the weekend cooking, for Sunday we'll swing back into winter mode, enjoying a pizza hot from the oven. We'll try an easy one, pizza supreme, which is also from the current issue of Cooking Light. Instead of turkey sausage, we'll go with chicken sausage, which is on sale at Sprouts but is never expensive anywhere. For the jarred pasta sauce, I stocked up on the excellent sale Sprouts just had on Muir Glen, so there's plenty to reach for.

And that will get us through the weekend planning.