Weekend Dinner Ideas

With such good specials at the new Lucky's Market in Longmont, one shopping trip there is driving my thinking for the whole weekend. Apologies that I simply don't have time to compare the Longmont and Boulder Lucky's prices, but past experience has been that the Longmont Lucky's is still way less on meat, usually equal on fish, and Boulder excels on organic produce.

For tonight, the Alaskan cod fillets I see in the Longmont Lucky's flyer for $7.99 a pound (also a red rock cod for $6.99, both wild harvested) are prompting me to think of cod with Mediterranean salsa from Gourmet magazine, although it might just morph into fish tacos instead.

The Lucky's Market in Longmont also has antibiotic-free boneless skinless chicken breasts for the eye-popping price of $1.97 a pound this week (all sales through Wednesday), so something I haven't made for quite a while, chicken paprikash from Cooking Light is looking good. Rather than cholesterol-laden egg noodles, this is best done in my opinion with the wide yolkless noodles available at Lucky's Market or in the Kosher section at Whole Foods. The Longmont Lucky's also has conventional asparagus for just 87 cents a pound for a side.

Sunday has been the day that has really been driving my thoughts to the Longmont Lucky's, since that will be our Saint Patrick's Day eve dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Lucky's Market, where their meat department promises "never ever" standards of "antibiotic free - humanely processed - no preservatives," has ready to cook corned beef for $3.97 a pound, while this week's sale price at Whole Foods is $6.99 a pound. Considering all the shrinkage that happens with corned beef and the size of the hunk of meat you begin with, that makes a pretty noticeable difference. CORRECTION, AND IT'S A BIG ONE - I swung by the Longmont Lucky's to pick up that sale corned beef and found sodium nitrite among other things on the label. I asked the butcher about it, and he said the standards only apply to their in-house meats (this corned beef was packaged with the label of some firm). So I followed my original plan of buying my corned beef at Whole Foods as usual, and need to learn much more about just what meats fall under Lucky's "never ever" standards. Live and learn.