Happy 4th!

Happy and safe 4th of July to you. If you still don't know what's going on the grill or the rest of the table, here's a reminder of the 4th of July recipe guides I previously posted.

Boulder Farmers' Market Tomorrow

Yup, those hard-working farmers will be out there tomorrow, with the Boulder Farmers' Markets in both downtown Boulder and Longmont open on the 4th of July. Here's what the Market says to expect (PEACHES!):

In Season Now peaches, cherries, kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, strawberries, fava beans, zucchini, yellow squash, sugar snap peas, snow peas, carrots, spicy greens, arugula, spinach, green garlic, beets, mizuna, thyme, lavender, mint, and chives. Fresh cut flowers include lilies, sweet peas, and Canterbury bells, and plant starts and hanging baskets will be available for only a few more weeks. All season long, you will find honey, bread, baked goods, eggs, beef, lamb, goat, pork, chicken, locally-made cheeses, preserves, mushrooms, and greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers.

Note: Boulder and Longmont farmers markets will be open on Saturday, July 4th.  New to the market: ripe, juicy Western Slope peaches. Don't forget a napkin; you'll need it!

Whole Foods' Special Sales For The 4th

Whole Foods finally posted something about the variety of special sales that started yesterday around noon today. In addition to the fried chicken buckets, salami, and scallop sales I've already noted below from walking around yesterday, here are some others:

July 1 and 2, all beer 20% off.

July 1-4:

Red, white and blue 9 inch pie $9.99,
Twelve ounce Applegate hot dogs $3.50 a package.

July 1-5:
Ten ounce Jackson's Honest tortilla chips $3 each,
Honest lemonade (32 ounce) $1 each.

Bunch Of Special Sales At Pearl Whole Foods

And since there's been no notice distributed per usual custom, even the cashiers were speculating about whether these were limited to Pearl or extended locally. Crazy mix of one-, three-, four- and five-day specials that you just have to cruise on their own. The olive bar is $6.99 for today only, a fabulous deal at $3 off, especially if you choose the higher end items like the artichoke hearts or pesto. Two kinds of Creminelli's hand-crafted salamis are half price at $6.99, perfect for a weekend picnic (think that was marked as a three-day sale, yet the dates said 7/1-4, making it four days). Further temptation noticed was eight piece buckets of fried chicken for $8.99 each, signage said three day sale 7/3-7/5, but they're out there now marked at that price. So I guess you just have to go look, and see how things ring up!

4th Of July Coming Up Quickly

If it's the last day of June already, we're not far from a long weekend full of grilling. For some new ideas, here are a few guides to help you out: Fourth of July Feasts from Epicurious, Stars and Stripes and Fried Chicken from Bon Appetit, Fourth of July from Food & Wine magazine, and Summer Grilling Guide from Saveur.

Alfalfa's Grand Opening Sales

With Alfalfa's new store in Louisville now open, special sales are being offered both there and at the Boulder store through Wednesday, July 9th. Looking particularly good to me are Niman Ranch 12 ounce sausages nearly half off at $3.99 each, organic Kingdom English sharp cheddar $5 off at $7.99 a pound, farm raised Shetland salmon fillets $9.99 a pound, $6 off (with fresh wild in season, it's kind of hard to be tempted by farmed, but the Shetland name maybe implies a fine Scottish one?), housemade ham and cheese macaroni salad just $2.99 a pound, a whopping $4 off (and made with organic ingredients), three-packs of Julie's organic ice cream bars better than half off at $2.29, and Boulder Canyon chips three for $5 for the five ounce bag.

Have a happy and safe Independence Day, and try to stay cool this weekend!

Four-Day Sale At Whole Foods

For this 4th of July weekend, Whole Foods is offering us an extended sale running from today through Sunday. Both bbq and fried chicken are $6.99 each for eight pieces, 30% off, and there's an unspecified fresh coconut water that's $3.99 each, $1 off (won't find me going anywhere near that one - can't stand coconut). And there's also this:

BBQ Ribs At Sprouts

Once again, Sprouts is offering to make a summer holiday easier on your cooking schedule, again doing baby back ribs cooked on a mesquite grill at $12.99 a full rack. The ribs will be available Friday and Saturday, the 4th and 5th, from 11 am to 6 pm or while they last.

4th Of July Almost Here

We're still in June, but Friday will be the 4th of July already. It's traditionally a day for grilling, so here's a reminder of the grilling guides I posted prior to Memorial Day, equally appropriate for this week. If you are looking for something specific to the 4th, Food and Wine magazine has you covered with its 4th of July Recipes. Happy and safe 4th!

Happy 4th Today

Best wishes for a great 4th of July, hopefully with great grilling as part of it.  If you're still looking for inspiration, here's a reminder of a post I did a ways back on recipe guides for the 4th.  I've also subsequently encountered a guide from Food and Wine magazine for the 4th as well.  Have a great day!

July 4th Celebration At Alfalfa's

Alfalfa's will host a Hometown Throwdown July 4th, which is already this Thursday (with a seed spitting contest, no less!).  Their blurb says it goes until 4 pm but the graphic that accompanies it says until 3, so keep that in mind.  Here's what they say:

Hometown Throwdown

July 4th, 11am to 4pm

Come celebrate the 4th at Alfalfa's with these awesome activities!

-Burgers and other goodies from the Grill

-Seed spitting contest

-Mural painting

-Kids' Crafts

-LIVE music

-Local food tasting

-Raffles for awesome prizes

4th Of July Grilling Ideas

Looking for something new to spice up your 4th of July?  Epicurious can help you out with Recipes and Party Tips for a Star-Studded July 4th, while Cooking Light offers 4th of July Recipes.  And don't forget the various grilling guides I pulled together for a post around Memorial Day.  Hard to believe the 4th of July is coming up so quickly!

One-Day Sale At Whole Foods Tomorrow

Our local Whole Foods stores will continue the tradition of Wednesday one-day sales for the holiday tomorrow with a pretty good one, especially for anyone looking for fresh salmon to put on the grill for the 4th.  Here's what they say:
On Sale Wednesday, July 4th only:
Fresh Sockeye
Salmon Fillet
$12.99/lb
(save $7/lb)

Creminelli - 5.5oz
Americano Salame
$6.99/ea
(save $7/ea)

Whole Foods Market
Tortilla Chips & Salsa
Entertaining Trays
$5.99/ea
(save $4/ea)

Relief In Sight?

Channel 9 is actually using the word "monsoon" for Friday and Saturday of this week.  Is it possible that we will see the return of the monsoon rains???  And a heads up for grilling on the 4th this Wednesday - afternoon storms are also in the forecast for then.  My plan for whole grain salads and Qrunch burgers done indoors might be just the ticket.

4th Of July Dinner Plan Help

Thinking of something special for your 4th of July celebration next Wednesday?  There are lots of guides out there to help, including these from Epicurious, Cooking Light, Food and Wine magazine, and Whole Foods.  But so much traditional 4th of July cooking focuses on the grill, so with our high fire danger (even the Folsom Field fireworks have been cancelled), I'm contemplating the radical step of taking it all indoors, maybe with some of the great Qrunch quinoa burgers I discovered last week at Whole Foods, and an experiment with one of the whole grain salads that were featured in an article in this month's Bon Appetit.  More on that later.  But we'll for sure have some Colorado microbrews on hand, and I'm happy to see how many are now opting for the light protection and convenience of cans instead of bottles.

Weekend Sale At Whole Foods

Our local Whole Foods stores are giving us a duo of special sales for today all the way through the Monday holiday, 7/2-4. Fresh wild sockeye salmon fillet is $14.99 a pound. You can find it for $9.99 a pound at several places around Boulder, but I've never met a Whole Foods fish I didn't like (actually, love). Also, Stacy's pita chips are $2 a bag, a third off. Happy 4th weekend!

Weekend Dinner Ideas, Including July 4th

It will be a busy Friday, so here's a quick summary of what's on deck for the long, hot holiday weekend, which will empasize grilling and cooling foods for hot temps.

We'll start it off with grilling tonight, going back to the fresh wild salmon that's $9.99 a pound at Sprouts, King Soopers, and Safeway. To dress it up a bit, we'll do it as grilled salmon with nectarine salsa from Bon Appetit, using the beautiful organic peaches Whole Foods has on sale for $1.99 a pound instead of the nectarines. Packages of diced organic yams will also go on the grill, and the side veggie will probably be some of the mountain of corn I got at Whole Foods' one-day sale this week.

With temperatures up across the weekend, by tomorrow we'll be thinking about picnic style dining, which brings to mind Mark Bittman's useful 101 20-Minute Dishes for Inspired Picnics from the New York Times. The pesto chicken rolls (number two) are a favorite, that we'll accompany with the tomato and peach salad (number four), using more of the gorgeous organic peaches from Whole Foods.

We still haven't made something big that will do for a midweek reheat as well, so on Sunday, we'll finish off the rest of the mountain of fresh corn from the Whole Foods one-day sale by doing a corn chowder, which will probably be corn and fingerling potato chowder with applewood-smoked bacon from Cooking Light. Both Whole Foods and Alfalfa's have their own in-house varieties of wonderful bacon to purchase in just the right number of slices you need.

For Monday, the 4th of July (yahoo!), we'll of course turn back to the grill, this time with the boneless Harris Ranch New York strip steaks that Sunflower has for $4.99 a pound. A potato salad will go on the side, and with radishes and snap peas in abundance in stores and the Farmer's Market right now, a good one to do is Caesar potato salad with sugar snap peas from Bon Appetit. In addition to being seasonal, I love how light this is for a potato salad, with those extra veggies and the olive oil/Dijon dressing.

And that will get us through the long holiday weekend. Enjoy!

4th of July Weekend Dinner Planning

Looking for ideas to put together some great meals for this Fourth of July weekend? Check out Bon Appetit's Fourth of July menu page and the Fourth of July Celebration page at Epicurious. Also, don't forget yesterday's post below on Mark Bittman's grilling videos and my post a few days ago about the current issue of Saveur magazine, BBQ Nation.

Bittman on Grilling

Want video from an expert on how to grill just about anything to prep for your Fourth of July weekend grilling events? Check out Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Grills at the New York Times for mouth-watering videos, with links to more grilling recipes as well. Remember, the NYT has unfortunately imposed limits to its previously free viewing, but at least your arrival from a blog post like this isn't supposed to count.

Free Pancake Breakfast

The Superior Whole Foods will be participating in a pancake breakfast at Community Park in Superior tomorrow morning. They say the breakfast is free, but I'd assume the local fire department that's making the pancakes would appreciate an appropriate donation. It's part of the Superior 4th of July festival, which also includes a parade and an awesome-sounding downhill one mile race. Here's what the town has to say about it:

"4th of July Festival (Parade and Pancake Breakfast) and Downhill Mile Race Sunday, July 4, 2010 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Community Park (Community Park Drive and Coalton Road) Keep your eye on the grand old flag , as we celebrate our country's birthday with the annual 4th of July Parade and Pancake Breakfast. The parade winds through neighborhoods and highlights our community with fun floats, a bicycle brigade and lots of toys and candy for the kids. The parade culminates with a delicious pancake breakfast for all residents and guests at Community Park. Entertainment will be provided by the Kelly Aspen Band (country music). What better way to start this important day!! For more information on the parade or to enter a float please contact contact Kristi Audette at 303-544-0359.

Get there early on July 4th to participate in or watch the Superior Downhill Mile--the Fastest Street Mile in the United States. The race starts at 7:00 a.m. at Rock Creek Parkway and McCaslin Boulevard. Register online and help reduce paper waste by visiting the Active.com listing for the race here. Click here to view the entry form. If you're interested in family registration, please visit Solepepper Sports (459 S. McCaslin) for details"