Weekday Dinner Ideas

Good Sunday morning. With one eye open and one hand on the coffee mug, I guess it's time to put down some dinner ideas for the rest of the week. My Whole Foods shopping trip this weekend provided the inspiration for tomorrow, as they have their beautiful air-chilled split chicken breasts on sale for $2.99 a pound, nearly half off for birds with such a fine pedigree. (The sale runs through Tuesday.) I'll most likely just roast them dusted with some herbs, along with some organic squash in the oven, and the organic kale they have for $1.50 a bunch in a pot on top. If you want to go fancier, one of my favorites is spicy roast chicken with tomatoes and marjoram from Bon Appetit.

Tuesday will be our usual reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is the Tuscan white bean soup with escarole from Cooking Light. Actually, it turned out not to be with escarole, since in a rare moment of disappointment, Whole Foods had no escarole for me this weekend, at least at the Pearl Street store. I improvised by substituting a bunch of organic kale plus some of their wonderful braising mix that they sell in bulk, and the result was delicious.

For Wednesday, I want to try another new recipe from the current January/February issue of Cooking Light, sausage and spinach risotto, which sounds right down my alley. Don't forget Sprouts' 25% off gluten-free sale through Wednesday, which is a great time to stock up on bags of Lundberg rice.

We'll be looking for pasta by Thursday, and I'm giving thought to yet another recipe from the current Cooking Light, bacon and butternut pasta. It looks a little involved for weeknight cooking, so I can see it getting deferred to a weekend and a can of clam sauce getting opened instead for Thursday's pasta. But how can you go wrong with a recipe that combines kale, creme fraiche, Gruyere, and *bacon*, all in a recipe that thinks it's light???

Which will get us through to next Friday's planning. Enjoy a gorgeous Sunday in Boulder, highs expected to reach 60 today, if only the winds will behave.