Weekday Dinner Ideas

Happy Mother's Day on this kind of chilly, gray Boulder morning.  Today's weather may influence tonight and tomorrow's dinner plans; tonight was supposed to be outdoor grilling, while I was thinking of one last round of pizza alla salsiccia (sausage pizza) from Cooking Light for tomorrow before things heat back up around here.  Since they're now saying there's a possibility of showers instead of clearing for this afternoon, I might just flip things, doing the pizza tonight and the grilling tomorrow.  We'll see.  (Chicken sausage for the pizza is $2.99 a pound at Sunflower, and if you limit it to basil chicken sausage, the same at Sprouts.)

Tuesday is our usual reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is the sweet corn chowder with hot-smoked salmon, also from Cooking Light.  The corn that I got at six ears for a dollar at Sunflower a couple of days ago was really pretty nice.

I'm thinking about the ground chicken breast that's $3.99 a pound at Sunflower through Wednesday to do a spin on the Thai dish variously known as laab, larb, larp, and maybe other names.  The Thai cabbage cups I've been doing from Cooking Light are a form of this, but this time I might try larb chicken salad from Bon Appetit.  The recipe describes it in appetizer servings, but larb makes a nice, light dinner.  The dish could also be made with the ground pork that's $2.97 a pound at Sprouts; at the Thai restaurant in Louisville where I first encountered the dish, it was made with pork.

Thursday frankly is still up in the air.  Whole Foods has been coming up with such enticing one-day sales on Wednesdays recently, they've been throwing my Thursday plans out the window.  I might just wait to see if Wednesday brings an interesting sale, and if not, fall back on a staple from the pantry like linguine with clam sauce.  Cento makes a nice canned white clam sauce that's always in the cupboard, and there's always a wedge of parmesan and salad fixings in the fridge, plus tomatoes on the counter (never refrigerated!).

Which basically gets us to Friday's planning.