Weekend Dinner Ideas

Okay, so if it's going to be about 100 degrees today, what are we going to do about dinner?  Picnic-style food!  I could turn to my favorite 101 20-minute ideas for inspired picnics that Mark Bittman did for the New York Times, since it's chock full of ideas.  But since Whole Foods' new sales flyer came out on Wednesday, it has been screaming PICNIC at me, with already prepared smoked turkey pesto wraps for $5.99 a wrap (which easily serve two), and smoked mozzarella pasta salad for $7.99 a pound.  So unless I get more ambitious, tonight is looking like cook's night off!

We'll get back to cooking tomorrow, and back to the grill to keep things cool, turning to Whole Foods' fabulous weekender sale on MSC-certified harpoon caught fresh swordfish that's $16.99 a pound through Sunday.  I love a truly fresh swordfish so much, I think it's criminal to apply anything further than a crack of pepper and a squeeze of lemon to it.  That means I should get more inventive with the sides, and with Munson's local corn having arrived, one is going to be tomato and corn salad with marjoram from Bon Appetit.  The butter lettuce makes a nice presentation, but both Sunflower and Whole Foods have organic leaf lettuce for $1.50 a head right now, a decent substitution.  I'm not sure where we stand yet on local tomatoes coming in, but for non-local, Sunflower has organic romas for an astoundingly low 99 cents a pound.

For Sunday, we still need something big that will serve as an easy midweek reheat, and I'm still fixated on local corn, so I'm thinking chowder.  It's funny that I usually advocate swapping out pricey halibut for more inexpensive cod in a dish like chowder, but this time I'm contemplating going in the opposite direction.  Both Sprouts and Sunflower are offering fresh wild California halibut fillets for $10.99 a pound this week (the two stores now share the same fish supplier), and while that strikes me as suspiciously low for halibut, I'm going to take a look before forming an opinion.  If I like it, it will go as a cod swap into corn and cod chowder from Food and Wine magazine.  While I'm sure the recipe is divine in its original form, I'll lighten it by reducing the bacon, swapping half and half for heavy cream, and using nonfat milk for the remainder.  (Okay, so I always have the best of intentions for reducing the bacon, but that part usually doesn't happen.)  Again, Sunflower and Whole Foods have organic leaf lettuce for $1.50 a head and Sunflower has organic romas for 99 cents a pound for the side salad.

And that gets us through to Sunday's weekday planning.  Stay cool out there.