Friday, December 6, 2013

Weekend Dinner Ideas

This is a weekend that calls for comfort food, even though our temperatures are expected to climb out of single digits into the balmy teens.  This morning I was thinking of trying a pork shoulder roast recipe just discovered in the new issue of Bon Appetit (Whole Foods has fine American Homestead on sale at a good price right now, I think $2.99 a pound), until I realized the recipe calls for a six pound roast and would be hard to adapt.  Will have to save that one for a crowd.  Instead, I'll grab some bay scallops on sale at Lucky's in Longmont for linguine with bay scallops, fennel and tomatoes from Bon Appetit for tonight.

We'll continue the fennel theme tomorrow with a diabolical plan for real comfort food, fennel and leek gratin.  Mine comes from a favorite old cookbook, Great Good Food, which is a lighter take on cooking.  It unfortunately doesn't look to have transferred to the web, which is dominated by heavy fennel-leek recipes relying on cream and a ton of cheese.  I call this plan diabolical because it makes a large casserole, and I'm planning to use half of it as a cheat side dish for Monday as well.  For the protein, salmon will go on the grill pan.  It will most likely be that silky Norwegian salmon that Whole Foods has on sale for $13.99 a pound (it's evidently not reducing further in their weekend sale this week).  Sprouts and Lucky's in Longmont are also offering previously frozen wild salmon as options at lower prices (I think $8.99 and $9.99 - sorry, with no newspaper thanks to the storm yesterday, I have no flyers and no time to keep backtracking to my own sale report).

Sunday, we'll go with yet another comfort food (and something I can make in quantity for an easy midweek reheat as well), quick coq au vin from Bon Appetit.  I'm going to have some of those fine, antibiotic-free boneless skinless chicken breasts on hand from the Lucky's in Longmont, since they are only $1.99 a pound there through Wednesday, while the sale at the north Boulder Lucky's is $5.99.  Value packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts are also $1.99 a pound at all our local Sprouts stores through Wednesday.

For a Monday preview, the plan is to grab some of those Applegate chicken pot pies on sale for $2 each in Whole Foods' weekend sale through Sunday for a super easy comfort dinner, prepared chicken pot pies with a reheat of my fennel and leek gratin.  How easy and warming is that?

Stay warm this weekend.  I think I may have even found the right time to make a long-beloved favorite from New England, Indian pudding.  More on that later.

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