Weekday Dinner Ideas

So I get back from California, facing a bare fridge and much unpacking to do, only to find out that good friends from the east coast have made it as close as Taos.  So instead of getting life reorganized here, we piled into the car for a one-nighter in Taos to see them, and it was so good to do that.  Now I'm back, with renewed hopes for unpacking, laundry, and getting some food into the house (have to wonder about the level of my goals in life).  For tonight's dinner, we never got a chance to make (or even shop for) the cod, potato, and fennel casserole from Gourmet magazine that I'd previously planned, so that will be on deck for tonight, taking advantage of the last two days of Whole Foods' fine cod on sale for $9.99 a pound.

With the long distance runner in the family clamoring for pasta, that will be the plan for tomorrow.  My starting point will be pasta with winter squash and tomatoes from the New York Times, and Sprouts has organic butternut for just 88 cents a pound through Wednesday.  But I enjoy tinkering with recipes, and this one strikes me as benefiting from the addition of some fresh organic spinach ($3.99 a pound at Sprouts) and maybe starting with some sauteed ground meat (all sorts 40% off at Sprouts through Wednesday).

We'll make Wednesday easy with our usual reheat of something big, which this week will be tonight's cod, potato, and fennel casserole.

We'll also hit that ground meat sale by Wednesday for the final plan of the week, which will be Thai beef cabbage cups from Cooking Light, although I also like to make it with ground poultry, rather than the beef.

So I guess some sense of normalcy is starting to be restored!