Weekday Dinner Ideas

Good grief, how did it get to be Sunday morning already. Time for the rest of the week's dinner ideas.

For tomorrow, with identical chicken tender sales ($2.99 a pound) and organic broccoli sales ($1.49 a pound) at both Sprouts and Sunflower through Wednesday, I'm thinking about chicken, asparagus, and broccoli stir-fry from Bon Appetit. I also saw asparagus for just $1.69 a pound at Sprouts yesterday (think it was $3.99 a pound at Sunflower).

For Tuesday, with a forecast high of 97, I'm glad we'll just do our easy reheat of something big made over the weekend, which in this case will be our celebration of the arrival of local Munson's corn, the summer squash and corn chowder from Cooking Light. A side salad of local greens, some bread from the Whole Foods bakehouse, and it's dinner on a hot night.

I'm impressed by the 100% grass-fed organic ground beef Sprouts has on sale for $3.99 a pound through Wednesday, so I'll catch it by then to do an easy weeknight favorite we haven't made in a while, chipotle sloppy Joes. Rather than serving it in hamburger buns, I microwave organic russet potatoes and top them with the burger mixture.

We'll want a pasta dish by Thursday, and with the arrival of Boulder's local corn this week, we'll celebrate it with zucchini, corn, and basil fusilli with bacon from Gourmet magazine. That's a festival of summer in a bowl. (I cut way back on the bacon to lighten it up. Remember that at Alfalfa's and Whole Foods, you can buy just the number of wonderful house-made bacon slices you want. No need to deal with a giant package of leftover bacon.)

And that will get us through to next Friday's planning. Stay cool out there.