Weekday Dinner Ideas

Following our chowing down on steaks tonight, we'll definitely be ready for something vegetarian by tomorrow. With the abundance of corn and zucchini at this time of year, a favorite of mine is calabacitas, sometimes going by the name Mexican succotash. There are a zillion ways to do it, but it basically involves zucchini and corn, preferably with some roasted green chiles mixed in, and possibly some tomatoes, too (cherry tomatoes are good, and Sunflower has an excellent price on organics this week, $2.50 for 10 ounces). I like it served over brown rice, with a grating of sharp cheddar on top. I do a spin on a recipe from my beloved old Jane Brody's Good Food Book, but in surfing the web, I find a fellow blogger has posted what looks to me to be a great online option here.

For Tuesday, of course we have an easy reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is the corn and cod chowder from Food and Wine magazine. A salad, some bread, and that's dinner.

Tuesday will also mark the end of the current Whole Foods sale, which contains several tempting Hatch chile prepared items that make midweek cooking so easy. I'm thinking I'll grab the green chile salmon burgers by then (or maybe the green chile turkey burgers), in order to do a simple Wednesday dinner. I'll just add some mashed potatoes (or maybe get really decadent and get the green chile mac & cheese at Whole Foods, too) and a platter of lettuce, tomato, and avocado topped with a bit of salsa, and we're done.

We'll need a pasta dish by Thursday, and with our abundance of summer veggies, I'm thinking it will be Mark Bittman's pasta with corn, zucchini and tomatoes from the New York Times. When he originally published this, Bittman noted that you can do all kinds of spins on this, adding different veggies and substituting a variety of flavorings for the tarragon. One I particularly like is to take it to the southwest, using cilantro and a bit of chile powder instead of the tarragon, and maybe tossing some diced roasted green chiles, too.

And that will get us all the way to, good heavens, Labor Day weekend.