Weekday Dinner Ideas

Good morning Boulder, on a day that's finally expected to reach all the way up to 15 degrees, although we're a long way from that now.  This is getting old.  In any case, I've already mentioned that the cold weather calls for comfort food, and that tomorrow will be both comforting and exceptionally easy.  I'll swing by Whole Foods sometime today to pick up some of the Applegate chicken pot pies that are $2 each through today, the last day of Whole Foods' weekend sale.  To go with them tomorrow, while the oven is on anyway, we'll reheat the rest of last night's fennel and leek casserole, which turned out beautifully.  The recipe is from Great Good Food and unfortunately doesn't have a link, since this delicious lighter version uses some tomatoes, broth, and a modest amount of parmesan instead of cream and gobs of gruyere, as found in most recipes for this dish.

Tuesday will be our usual reheat of something big made over the weekend, which this week is tonight's quick coq au vin from Bon Appetit, yet another comfort food (not to mention the rest of the wine after some from a bottle goes into the recipe).  Two recipes reheated in one week sounds like cheating, but in this busy holiday time, 'tis the season to go easy on the cook.

After all that comfort food, and with temperatures probably finally climbing above the freezing mark, we'll lighten up Wednesday with the recipe for spicy Thai basil chicken wraps from Cooking Light, using some other ground meat since we've already been pretty heavy on the chicken this week.  This is one of the many variations of the Thai dish laab, larb or larp that have become a fave in the past couple of years.  Wrapping the spicy meat mixture in lettuce leaves is a refreshing change.

For Thursday, simplicity will reign again, pork chops from the $3.99 sale at the new Lucky's Market in Longmont through Wednesday.  I love Lucky's combination of their "never ever" standards and their reasonable prices for their meats.  While there, I'll probably stock up on some of the boneless skinless chicken breasts that are an extraordinary $1.99 a pound through Wednesday for the freezer, as the sale at the Boulder Lucky's is $5.99 a pound, which shows you how good the Longmont price is.

Stay warm!