Friday, August 5, 2011

Weekend Dinner Ideas

Friday's already speeding by, so it's time to get going on weekend dinner ideas, starting with tonight. For that, the chicken sausage sales at both Sprouts and Sunflower this week are turning my thoughts to sausage and polenta. This can be as simple as sausage sauteed in a grill pan (maybe with some onions and bell peppers) and polenta whisked in a three to one ratio with water, broth, and/or milk. The polenta itself is easy to find in the bulk aisle. For tonight, I might fancy it up a bit with a riff on parmesan polenta with spicy sausage sauce, a recent recipe from Cooking Light. I don't think the sausage necessarily has to be sun-dried tomato. If you do want that flavoring, you could always add some separately to the sauce.

We'll be back to the grill tomorrow on another hot weekend, enjoying yet more fresh, wild salmon ($8.99 a pound at Sprouts and just $7.99 a pound if you can get to Lucky's Market). We're also gleefully in the height of fresh corn season, with our local Munson's corn available at their farmstand at 75th and Valmont (50 cents an ear there) and at the Boulder Farmer's Market (three ears for $2 there). If standard conventional is okay with you, Sunflower has it at six ears for $1, and it is from Colorado. Put the corn with the salmon, and that spells grilled salmon with roasted corn relish from Cooking Light. Some organic yams will also go on the grill, either as spears in a basket or diced in foil packages.

Not being able to get enough of that corn (heck, that's just a relish for tomorrow) and still needing something big that will also serve as a midweek reheat, for Sunday we'll turn to corn and fingerling potato chowder with applewood-smoked bacon, also from Cooking Light (I seem to be favoring that magazine this weekend, rather than mixing things up). I've seen very handsome small, of course organic, potatoes at the Cure Organic Farm store, in case I don't make it to tomorrow's Farmer's Market, and both places of course have fabulous lettuce and other greens for the side salad. With a crusty loaf of bread from the Whole Foods bakehouse (ciabatta is $2.50 a loaf right now, but I lean towards the whole grain varieties), that's dinner.

And that will get us through another warm Boulder weekend.

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