Weekend Dinner Ideas

I'm not giving up on posting all of our dinner plans; I've only decided to give myself a little more latitude about when I post, rather than feeling like a slave to that drumbeat of posting.  That said, I'm sort of in the mood for sharing, so here goes.

We're looking at continuing mid-90s temperatures this weekend, which is really starting to get old, so to combat it, we'll go with refreshing picnic-type food for tonight's dinner.  The centerpiece will be quinoa tabbouleh from Bon Appetit.  The quinoa is a protein-rich grain, and the tabbouleh is heavy on veggies (plus I increased the amount of parsley per what I've read previously from Mark Bittman), so this is basically dinner in a bowl.  I find regular organic cucumbers are just fine in this, and Whole Foods has them for $1.99 a pound through Tuesday and they're 88 cents each at Sprouts through Wednesday, so you're a winner at either place.  I did find an unadvertised sale on organic grape tomatoes at Sprouts, though, which might tip the balance.  This really could be dinner on its own, but I have my lovely Creminelli Fine Meats salamis from last week's incredible one-day sale at Whole Foods, and I think I might just have to break out the Tartufo for our little pseudo-picnic.  Made with black summer truffles, it was $9 off at that great Whole Foods sale, being given away at just $6.99 each.  Unfortunately, while most people swoon over truffles, I've read that about 20% are unable to taste them, and I've suspected on several occasions that I fall into that latter unhappy category.  It's certainly worth another try.

Much less to say about Saturday's dinner, since some sort of fish will go on the grill, probably with some diced potatoes in foil packages also.  I'll check out the fresh wild sockeye fillets Sprouts has for $9.99 a pound this week, and talking with the fish guy at the Arapahoe store yesterday, they're getting it delivered four times a week, with one expected today.  If for some reason I find it's not my liking, there's that great fresh swordfish that's still on sale for $17.99 a pound at Whole Foods (at least at the Pearl Street store), and fresh sockeye fillets were also $17.99 a pound there yesterday.

For Sunday, I'm grabbing some of the lobster tails Whole Foods has for $7.50 each through Tuesday to do another round of a new favorite, creamy lobster pappardelle from Cooking Light.  It only needs two tablespoons of heavy whipping cream to get that creamy effect, but then I finish off the rest of the cream container in my coffee the next few mornings, so I'm overindulging anyway.

So welcome to another sizzling weekend!  At least this starts to make autumn beginning to sound good, when we can go back to putting pizzas and comfy casseroles in the oven.