A Start on This Week's Dinner

Haven't looked past the weekend yet, when staying cool with our temps in the high 90s will be our dominant theme. That means lots of food either grilled or not cooked at all. To start things off tomorrow, I'm intrigued by the latter category, as Whole Foods this week has a wrap on sale that sounds very similar to one I make myself from a Mark Bittman picnic idea. In prepared foods at Whole Foods, they're offering a smoked turkey pesto wrap for $4.99 each, $2 off. I wonder how it compares with the pesto chicken rolls that are number 2 in Bittman's wonderful 101 picnic ideas list, both in taste and in cost to prepare/buy. The Whole Foods version would certainly win in the convenience category. Alternatively, if it's too much cheating to not cook something (and heaven forbid, maybe even buy it already made), lots of the $1 shrimp skewers from Whole Foods could hit the grill.

However tomorrow turns out, Saturday will definitely involved grilling, going for the fresh wild salmon that's $8.99/lb at Sprouts and also at Lucky's this week. The whole dinner can be done on the grill, with sweet potato (read yam) spears, since organic yams are 99 cents a pound at Sunflower, and some other grilled veggies, either from my favorite farm stands, or the organic zucchini that Whole Foods has for $1 a pound. With organic peaches only 49 cents a pound this week at Lucky's, grilled peaches with a little vanilla frozen yogurt on top would be a sweet end to the dinner. The peaches would make a nice fruit salsa to go with the salmon as well. No need to haul out a recipe for the entire evening.

Then with shrimp on sale at Sunflower, there's a lovely-sounding recipe I've been wanting to try, summer quinoa pilaf with shrimp, that Vitamin Cottage published in last month's flyer. Not sure where to find a decent price on asparagus for it this week. Too bad I didn't think of it last week, when we were feasting on the 88 cent asparagus from Lucky's.

Much more thinking to do for the rest of the week.