Weekend Dinner Ideas

With great prices on sea scallops, Copper River salmon, and cod happening in Boulder, this will be a weekend for fish!

To start with tonight, today's fantastic one-day sale on sustainable sea scallops at Whole Foods for $9.99 a pound is definitely pointing me to seared scallops with lemony sweet pea relish from Cooking Light. I made the wonderfully seasonal pea relish last weekend to go with our Copper River salmon, and it was delish, so now I get to try it as originally envisioned. I just hope my favorite Cure Organic Farm store will have pea shoots today, as they did last week, since I'd like to do this tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow's Farmer's Market.

Since some showers might still be around tomorrow, I'll postpone our grilling until Sunday, and go with a big fish chowder instead, doing smoky shrimp and halibut stew from Bon Appetit. I think using halibut in such a stew is a waste of a fine, very pricey fish, and this works wonderfully with Alaskan cod, which Sprouts has for $7.99 a pound. They also have 41/50 count ex peel raw shrimp for $5.99 a pound, a perfect combo (they're $1 more per pound at Sunflower). A big side salad and fresh bread from Whole Foods' bakehouse will go on the side.

It currently looks like by Sunday we can count on a good grilling day, which we've been waiting for in this fresh Copper River salmon season. See my salmon price comparison to check out where you might want to pick up Copper River this week. As I mentioned, last week I made the sweet pea relish noted above to go with it, and it was delicious. This week the grilled salmon will either go naked with just a squeeze of lemon, or I might try this red pepper and corn relish from Bon Appetit. Roasted sweet potato packages will also go on the grill, for and a green veggie side, we'll have shaved zucchini salad with parmesan pine nuts from Bon Appetit. You'd certainly want the squash to be organic in this uncooked dish, and Sprouts has organic Italian squash for $1.29 a pound this week. While there, don't forget their big 25% off bulk department sale, which includes pine nuts, yahoo.

And that will have us swimming all the way through a weekend of seafood.