Weekend Dinner Ideas

Since it's Friday, I'd best get going with dinner ideas for the weekend, starting with tonight. While I was hugely impressed by Cooking Coach Beth Pilar's performance at last night's French cooking and wine class at Whole Foods, creating such intricate dishes is something I'll leave to the Cordon Bleu-trained chefs like her. While I might take a little more time on my weekend than my weekday dinners, and like to make everything from scratch, there's no way I have the time, patience, or skill to create layer upon layer of complexity in a dish as she so capably did. So on to tonight's plan for a simple, but hopefully delicious meal. I've been wanting to try a recipe recently published in the New York Times, cod with sesame and ginger, and with cod $6.99 a pound this week at Sprouts, tonight will be the night. With the oven running, some baked yam spears will go with it, and Sunflower has organic ones for just 99 cents a pound.

I've been a little overwhelmed by all the rich holiday foods we encounter everywhere these days, so to counter them, for tomorrow we'll do a wintry and nearly vegetarian soup, potato and root vegetable chowder with bacon from Bon Appetit. Yes, it does have bacon, but it's only two slices in a whole big pot of chowder. One of the wonderful, fresh baguettes from Whole Foods that are half price at $1.50 will have to go on the side, along with a salad.

For Sunday, in perhaps a teeny nod to last night's French demo, we'll take advantage of the chicken tenders that Sprouts has on sale for $1.99 a pound (and Sunflower has boneless skinless breasts for $2.99 a pound) to do quick coq au vin from Bon Appetit. This is delicious served over wide noodles, or the savory broth could also be sopped up with another of those fantastic French baguettes from Whole Foods.

And that will get us through the weekend with some great food that's still pretty simple to prepare, just about my speed.