A Few Dinner Ideas

Since I made the decision to release myself from my self-imposed prison of posting our menus for every single day, every single week, I find I've not only returned to enjoying menu planning, but also returned to simpler cooking, no longer requiring links to recipes so that I'd have something to share. Dealing with the abundance of produce from our CSA this summer is further skewing my thinking away from ideas that might have broader appeal, and I'm posting this week's plans just to illustrate these points.

For tonight, the thinking is that we want something big to also serve as an easy midweek reheat, so with local Munson's corn now available and fresh wild salmon fillets $9.99 a pound at Sprouts through Wednesday, I went in search of a chowder that combines corn and salmon, so this one actually does have a link, I settled on the salmon and corn chowder that's posted on Epicurious, although it will need a little lightening, as I wouldn't put a whole cup of cream in anything. I think maybe half that much, and using half and half instead, will give it plenty of creaminess.

The gigantic bag of green beans from our Red Wagon Organic Farm CSA this week once again has me thinking of the ground beef and green beans recipe from my beloved old copy of Jane Brody's Good Food Cook Book, and the very lean 93% ground sirloin Sprouts has for $3.99 a pound this week falls right into that plan. I'll work from the cookbook, but Allrecipes has posted a somewhat similar recipe here.

Tuesday will be our easy reheat, tonight's chowder, with a big salad on the side. Sprouts has organic on the vine tomatoes for $1.98 a pound to go into the salad. Also organic celery at 98 cents a bunch, and I need that for the chowder anyway.

With all chicken sausage $3.99 a pound at Sprouts, that originally had me thinking of a simple pasta dish involving sausage, onion, peppers and good quality jarred pasta sauce for Wednesday. But we always have salad on the side with a pasta dish like that, and with a refrigerator full of Red Wagon non-salad veggies, the sausage pasta idea morphed into a southern New England classic of sausage, onion and pepper grinders, using one of the fine baguettes from Whole Foods (their organic "Everything" baguette is $2 through the 29th, and that would make for quite a taste explosion). Somehow I can't serve kohlrabi or beets on the side with pasta, but with what's essentially a sandwich, that seems okay.

With a beautiful bunch of collard greens from the CSA also still in the fridge, that was my starting point for Thursday. The aforementioned Jane Brody cookbook has a simple recipe for sauteing chopped greens with a bit of garlic or whatever, and mixing in canned cannellini beans to make it both your veggie and starch in one pot. Don't know if they are still doing it, but I recently found an unadvertised special on Eden Organic's cannellinis (plus the rest of their beans) at the Pearl Street Whole Foods at three for $5, incredible since they usually run closer to $3 each. For a protein to go with it, I can grab some of the chicken breasts on sale at the Longmont Lucky's for just $1.97 a pound through Wednesday. The Boulder Lucky's is offering ones with their "Never Ever" standards for a higher sale price, and Sprouts also has value packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts for $2.99 a pound through Wednesday.

Which gets us through a week that uses up almost everything from the CSA except the grilling onions, but I can pretty easily find a way to incorporate those. Uh oh, also whichever remains, kohlrabi or beets. Enjoy a week finally in the 80s and maybe even just the 70s for the latter half, with a good chance of rain every day!