Weekday Dinner Ideas

Seems like I've been burning out on the cooking recently, and with Thanksgiving looming, I'm going easy on myself this week with simple dinners.  Tomorrow's will still involve a recipe, since I want to do a seasonal butternut squash risotto with shrimp from Bon Appetit, using the really big shrimp Sprouts has for $5.99 a pound through today, the last day of their 72 hour sale.  They also have organic butternut for 99 cents a pound.

Simplicity will kick in Tuesday and run through the rest of the week.  Tuesday is our usual reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is tonight's slow-cooked Tuscan pork with white beans from Cooking Light.  Speaking of which, I need to speed this up and get that assembled in the slow cooker to cook all day.

The family will be craving pasta by Wednesday, so we'll throw out the recipes and go with a simple sausage and peppers over linguine.  All it takes is sauteing chicken sausage ($2.99 a pound through Wednesday at Sprouts) along with bell pepper and onion, then adding a good quality jarred pasta sauce.  Served over pasta, it's a riff on the New England classic, an Italian sausage and pepper grinder.

We'll want something Asian and rice-based by Thursday, and with chicken breast tenders $1.99 a pound at Sprouts through Wednesday, it will be an improvised chicken stir-fry over rice.  I make it even easier by starting with a defrosted bag of the oriental edamame veggie mix (the brand name escapes me at the moment) that usually can be found in the freezer at both Sprouts and Whole Foods.  Start with a base of garlic, fresh ginger, and hot red pepper, then top the stir-fry with fresh scallions, and it couldn't be easier.

Now off to the slow cooker assembly.  I wonder if I might find any usable leaves remaining on my sage plant, which is now hiding under a layer of snow.