Alfalfa's Talks Good Sleep Tomorrow

Are you having trouble sleeping through the night? Alfalfa's may offer some help tomorrow with a good sleep lecture (that maybe you could sleep through). Here's what they say:

50 Ways To Get Great Sleep Lecture
Wednesday, Nov. 16th
Community Room
Wednesday, Nov. 16th
6-7:30pm
FREE

Trouble falling asleep? Not sleeping through the night? Whatever your sleep dilemna, our Wellness Manger Elizabeth will open your eyes to 50 strategies that will help you close ‘em. From blackout curtains and supplements to stress relievers and foot moisturizers, we’ll show you how to optimize your nightly rest and lay the foundation for all-day energy.

Community Food Share Needs Your Help

Community Food Share's annual Let's Bag Hunger food drive is underway through the 23rd, and this worthy organization really deserves your support, especially in these tough times for so many people. So you think you're a smart shopper? Put it to the test! Show off your smart grocery shopping savvy by seeing how much bang for the buck you can find in assembling a large donation for the drive (look here for a list of most-needed groceries). Although I shop our Boulder natural grocery stores when buying for myself, that's because almost all those goods are fresh, from the produce, meat, and seafood departments. Since Community Food Share needs non-perishable items instead, I find it more cost-effective to break out my commercial grocery store cards for my donation, combing the aisles of Safeway or King Soopers for BOGOs and good discounts on canned goods and the like. The Safeway store at the Meadows Shopping Center has been known to put out some special deals during the drive just to entice more giving. A couple of years ago, they were practically giving away Del Monte canned goods, at something like 30 cents a can. And if you've procrastinated on getting your flu shot this year, you can get it at their pharmacy, then receive a voucher for 10% off your food purchase within the week, thereby stretching your savvy shopping power even further. So please put on your smart shopping hat and see how much nutritious, non-perishable food you can assemble for Community Food Share!

Weekday Dinner Ideas

By Sundays, I get our dinners planned out through Thursday, but this week is especially easy, since it includes not only our customary reheat one night, but I'm also reserving one night to head out for First Bite Boulder. I don't yet know which night it will be (which is probably pretty stupid, considering how popular and crowded it is), but that leaves only two dinners to plan, plus the reheat.

With organic leeks theoretically on sale at Sunflower for $1.99 a pound (they were out of stock yesterday), I still have leeks on the mind for a pasta dish, linguine with spicy leek and tomato sauce from Bon Appetit. The fennel seeds and dash of vinegar give it a special touch.

Another dish that will be on deck will be five spice pork stir-fry with soba noodles, also from Bon Appetit, slicing the nice, lean boneless pork chops that are on sale at Sprouts for $2.99 a pound. This is also good served over brown rice, but the soba noodles have the whole grain goodness of buckwheat too, and they cook in a flash.

Finally, the third dinner, whenever that will fall, will be our usual reheat of something big made over the weekend, which in this case is the leek and potato chowder from my faithful old cookbook, Jane Brody's Good Food Book. Since there's no link for that, this one from Cooking Light looks pretty good too.

So with a First Bite Boulder somewhere in the mix, that gets us to next Friday's planning.

Boulder Natural Turkey Price Comparison

Thinking about where your fresh natural turkey will come from this Thanksgiving? Here are a few observations, bearing in mind that they're only from the stores I get to most frequently, and even these stores might have additional options I haven't seen. Also keep in mind the many variables involved in "natural." Stores listed in alphabetical order, as always.

Alfalfa's

Diestel all-natural fresh turkey, $2.49 a pound (heritage turkeys also available).

Sprouts

Fresh Sprouts free-range turkey $1.49 a pound.

Sunflower

Fresh all natural turkey $1.47 a pound.

Vitamin Cottage

Several options, all "deep chilled, free range, antibiotic free, no hormones, $5 deposit required":
Mary's, $1.99 a pound
Shelton's, $2.99 a pound
Mary's organic, $3.39 a pound
Mary's heritage, $5.99 a pound

Whole Foods

Too many options to report them all, so check their turkey price website for the full array. Here are the majors:

Diestel all natural turkey, $2.49 a pound
Diestel organic, $3.49 a pound
Diestel organic heirloom, $4.99 a pound

Interesting that for the smaller feast, they also offer a six to 10 pound petite turkey at $2.99 a pound.

Boulder Farmers' Market Today

Market alert - you only have today and next week to enjoy our downtown Boulder Farmers' Market, as next week will be the last one for this year (aside from the special holiday market that will be held out in Longmont on December 3rd and 4th). Here's the list of lovely autumnal produce you can expect to find today.

Now At the Market

Greens
Arugula, Braising Mix, Chard, Collards, Kale, Spinach

Herbs
Cilantro, Parsley

Vegetables
Beets, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Celery, Eggplant, Fava Green Beans, Fennel and Fennel Flowers, Fingerling Potatoes, Garlic, Leeks, Mini-English Cucumbers, Mushrooms, Onions, Parsnips, Pepper, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Radish, Roasted Peppers, Sunchokes, Sweet Potatoes, Turnips, Winter Squash

Tomatoes
Green, Slicing

Fruit
Apples, Melon

Oyster Sampling In Superior

Want to learn to shuck oysters from the masters? Check out the Oyster Fest happening this Sunday, the 13th, at the Superior Whole Foods store. Here's what they say:

Sunday, November 13th

2nd Annual Superior Oyster Fest
2:00pm-6:00pm Free

Join us at the Superior Store and spend some time with our Seafood Mongers in the seafood department and enjoy the experience as they shuck and sample oysters and other delicacies of the sea!

P.S. from me. Both the Pearl Street and Superior stores also have kids' events planned for Sunday, but I'm busy enough trying to cover what's happening for us grown up types.

Eat Out For Veterans

On this Veterans Day, if you find yourself eating out instead of cooking in, you might pick one of the many Boulder restaurants that are participating in Hungry For Change, through which they are donating 15% of their proceeds today to benefit a local program serving veterans. You can see the list of participating restaurants here, and it includes some good lunch spots as well as dinner places. Mmm, truffle fries at Larkburger to benefit veterans. Okay, twist my arm.

Olives Recalled At Safeway

This evidently doesn't affect the local natural foods stores I cover, but readers might want to know that some Divina olives sold at Safeways in Boulder and Longmont have been recalled due to botulism fears. You can read about it here, and thanks to an alert reader for notifying me about it.

Weekend Dinner Ideas

For a weekend that's going to be filled with raking leaves (why haven't we had big Boulder winds to blow them across the street, where they have landscaping crews?), I'd better get the dinner plans out of the way. Tonight will be a healthy fish, and I'm intrigued by a new recipe from the October issue of Cooking Light, salmon with red pepper pesto. We're sadly out of the fresh wild salmon season, but there are some frozen wild caught salmon options around, including sockeye at Sprouts for $8.99 a pound. I'm also thinking about another recipe from that same Cooking Light issue, roasted sweet potato salad with cranberry-chipotle dressing to go on the side, assuming I have that much ambition. Sprouts has organic yams for $1.29 a pound, and this might even be a tryout for Thanksgiving.

With today's one-day sale at Whole Foods on whole chickens for $1.29 a pound, tomorrow is going to be a simple, seasonal roast chicken with roasted winter veggies like organic squash on the side, no recipe needed. Sunflower has organic acorn, butternut, spaghetti squash and pie pumpkins all at 99 cents a pound (I wonder how a small pie pumpkin would do if wedged for roasting - probably great), and Sunflower also has organic leeks for $1.99 a pound.

For Sunday, needing something big for a midweek reheat, and also thinking about those organic leeks at Sunflower, I'll do an old favorite, potato-leek chowder, from Jane Brody's Good Food Book. I don't have a link for the old cookbook, but recipes for this abound, such as this one from Cooking Light, which also incorporates cauliflower and looks kind of tempting. Organic potatoes and cauliflower are also on sale at Sunflower at good prices, in addition to the organic leeks. Salad will go on the side, as well as some fresh bread from the Whole Foods bakehouse, perhaps the rosemary sourdough that's on sale for $2.99 a loaf.

And that will get us through a backbreaking weekend of leaf raking. Happy fall, and happy 11/11/11.

Best Deal Yet This Year On Imagine Broth

My apologies to anyone who thinks I'm obsessed with the virtues of Imagine organic broth, but when you find such a useful product that's free range, organic, MSG-free (read some of those other labels carefully for all the names under which MSG masquerades), and also is super-flavorful, it's maybe worth a little obsession. Since it also has a long shelf life (look at the expiration date on the top of the box), it's also a good stock-up item. Its usual price pushes towards three and a half dollars, so the discounts on it that crop up around the holidays present an excellent opportunity to lay in that stock. If you haven't already laid in enough to get you through several months (for me, that's a lot, and current expiration dates are next summer), there's an opportunity to do so at a place I don't usually cover: King Soopers. They're doing a "10 item mega event" through November 15th, in which $5 instantly comes off your price at checkout when you purchase 10 of the participating products. Their price with a King Soopers card is an already good $2.49, so if you buy 10 of them, it works out to $1.99 a box with that card. (You can mix and match participating products, so if you want something else to fill out your 10 items, Annie's mac and cheese, a pantry staple, is also participating, and that price works out to just 69 cents a box.) Yes, technically Whole Foods had an even lower price a few weeks ago with their $1 off coupon for a single box of sale broth, but $1.99 a box is the best price we've seen so far this season for buying a slew of them.

P.S. If you happen to be there this Saturday, the 12th, they're doing a Holiday Open House sampling from noon to 5, too!