Weekend Dinner Plans

I definitely know what will be on deck for dinner this weekend, but am a bit conflicted about the order of it.  Today is looking like a great grilling day, with highs pushing towards 90 and little chance of storms, and Sunday is forecast to be a pretty good one too, while tomorrow's temperature plunge and likely rain will make it a great day to stay inside.  My conflict comes from what to grill today versus Sunday.  I see two particularly interesting possibilities:  burgers from today's Buck A Burger sale at Whole Foods, and the fresh wild halibut from the Sea of Cortez that Sprouts has for $12.99 a pound (although I haven't yet seen the fish myself).  Other fish possibilities include Whole Foods' $14.99 a pound sale on fresh farmed Scottish salmon, and a tantalizing report I've received from a friend that the Gunbarrel King Supers has fresh farmed Norwegian salmon for $9.99 a pound.  Since I usually use ground meat within a day or so of purchase, I'll get the opinion of the meat dudes at Whole Foods about waiting until Sunday to use the burgers I'll be buying at today's one-day sale, since my preference for today is to grill some fish, preferably the halibut if I'm pleased with it.

With some rain likely for tomorrow (yay!) and temperatures way down, I'll do a springtime adaptation of baked rigatoni with ricotta and collard greens from myrecipes.com.  Instead of mature collards, I'll use a big bag of spring braising mix from Cure Organic Farm (either from tomorrow's Boulder Farmers' Market or from their farm store, now open at 75th and Valmont).  Other options include the organic spinach that's $1.50 a bunch this week at Whole Foods, or the organic kale that's $1.29 a bunch at Sprouts.

So Sunday rests with what I decide today about grilling.  At this moment, the chance for afternoon storms is slightly greater for Sunday than today, and a burger from today's one-day sale at Whole Foods would do better on the indoor grill pan, should that become necessay, than a piece of halibut would fare.  So if the meat dudes at Whole Foods think this would be okay, I'll wait until Sunday to grill the burgers, either indoors or out.  Whole Foods also has a great deal right now on burger buns from their Bakehouse, $2.50 a package.  Although I'm not seeing them in the ads, organic sweet potatoes will go on the side, either in foil packages on the grill, or as spears in the oven.

Which gets us, in a flaky way, through the weekend.