Weekday Dinner Ideas

Quickly continuing the dinner planning during this busy time, for tomorrow, I'm wanting to do a pasta that will incorporate some of that asparagus that's just $1.88 a pound at Sunflower, but most recipes that feature it just seem too much like spring or summer. I'm therefore going to do an adaptation of a nicely seasonal dish, adding asparagus to cook in the sauce of pasta with winter squash and tomatoes from the New York Times. Sunflower also has organic tomatoes for $1.99 a pound, and their price on organic winter squash is usually good.

Tuesday will be our customary reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is the smoky shrimp and halibut stew from Bon Appetit.

For Wednesday, all the ground meats that are on sale through that day are having me think of what has become the new fave dinner in this house, Thai beef cabbage cups from Cooking Light. It's a version of the Thai or Lao dish laab, and can be made with ground meats other than beef, too. Sprouts has fresh ground chicken, chicken breast or pork all at $2.99 a pound, and at Sunflower, it's ground turkey at that price, so you have quite a choice. Also, I prefer to serve it in organic lettuce leaves rather than the cabbage, and Sunflower has organic red or green leaf lettuce for $1.50 a head.

In the interest of simplicity, Thursday will be what's becoming our end of the week fallback option, sauteed pork chops, and Sprouts has their very good boneless center-cut pork loin chops at $2.99 a pound through Wednesday. The also have pints of Cascade Fresh sour cream for just 99 cents each, to go on top of microwaved "baked" organic potatoes on the side (organic russets are $3.99 for a three pound bag at Sunflower through Wednesday).

Which gets us through a busy week!