One-Day Sale At Whole Foods Tomorrow

For tomorrow only, our local Whole Foods stores will have organic gold and red potatoes for $1 a pound.  Nice prices for those, but if you aren't concerned about the color, Sprouts' current deal, which continues through next week, on five pound bags of organic russets for $2.99 a bag, is a better price per pound.  (For the math-challenged, five pounds of potatoes at $1 a pound is $5.  One thing I've learned since starting this blog is that a surprising number of people don't do basic math.)

Natural Turkey Price Comparison Smackdown

My Thanksgiving turkey will come from either Whole Foods or Vitamin Cottage, since I want a bird with a fine pedigree, including being free of growth stimulants and hormones, and those are the two stores within my reach in Boulder.  Each store offers a variety of birds, and here are their prices, Whole Foods' being taken from their website, and Vitamin Cottage's from the flyer in the Boulder store.  All are uncooked birds (Whole Foods has some precooked offerings as well).

Vitamin Cottage (as previously reported):

They are all deep chilled, free range, antibiotic free, no hormones, and a $5 deposit is required.

Mary's fresh free-range deep chilled 10-24 lb turkeys, $2.29 a pound.

Shelton's fresh free-range deep chilled 10-24 lb turkeys, $3.29 a pound.

Mary's organic fresh free-range deep chilled 10-24 lb turkeys, $3.39 a pound.

Mary's heritage fresh free-range deep chilled 7-20 lb turkeys, $5.99 a pound.  

Whole Foods: 

Petite whole turkey 6-10 lb turkeys, $2.99 a pound  

Diestel all natural turkeys, $2.49 a pound  

Diestel organic turkeys, $3.99 a pound  

Diestel organic heirloom turkeys, $4.99 a pound  

Diestel all natural turkeys (Tom), $2.49 a pound

Community Food Share Drive Coming Up

One of my favorite things about the holiday season arriving is the annual Let's Bag Hunger food drive organized by Community Food Share.  This year it will start this Sunday, November 11th, running through the 21st, when you'll be able to donate food at tons of stores around town.  It's a wonderful program, and they're looking for volunteers right now to help pull it off (call Sue at CFS, 303 652-3663 ext 202).

Thanksgiving Planning Guides

So if turkey reservations are already getting tight (see the post below this), I guess it's time to start planning for the big Thanksgiving feast.  My turkey, stuffing, and gravy are sacrosanct traditions, but everything else is open to change, so long as it stays within the traditional mood.  For some help with ideas, here are a few fine guides:  Thanksgiving recipes, menus, and how-to videos from Epicurious, top 26 Thanksgiving menus from Bon Appetit, celebrate the holidays from Cooking Light (they get double duty out of that one), Thanksgiving recipes from Food and Wine magazine, and Thanksgiving from Saveur.

Turkey Reservations Getting Tight At Vitamin Cottage

When I was at the Vitamin Cottage in Boulder recently, the cashier mentioned that their turkey reservations are selling out rapidly.  So if that's where you're headed for your turkey, you'd best get moving on getting your reservation and deposit in.  I summarized their prices for Mary's and Shelton's turkeys in this post last month.

Weekday Dinner Ideas

Here's a quick rundown.  For tomorrow, spicy shrimp and fettuccine from Cooking Light, with big 26/30 count shrimp $7.99 a pound at Sprouts.

For Tuesday, the double batch of chicken paprikash I'm making tonight, also from Cooking Light, will make for an easy midweek reheat.  Sprouts has value packs of boneless skinless chicken breasts for just $1.99 a pound through Wednesday.

Wednesday will be simmered cabbage with beef Shan style, yet another one from Cooking Light.  The impetus for this one is just to make good use of all the cabbage I still have left from a Thai cabbage wrap recipe done a few days ago.

We'll wrap up the planning with a risotto from my favorite old risotto book (so it doesn't have a link), involving butternut squash (organic 88 cents a pound through Wednesday at Sprouts) and peas.  But googling it brings up plenty of online options as well.

Which quickly gets us through to Friday's planning.

Last Regular Farmers' Market Today

The season is really flying, since today marks the last regular market of the Boulder Farmers' Market's 2012 season.  But don't go into withdrawal yet, as there will be Cornucopia Days from them for the next two weekends, as they say:

Save the dates! Back by popular demand, the Boulder market will host Cornucopia Days on November 10th & 17th. Same place, same time as the regular Boulder market. 8am - 2pm on 13th Street. Look for details next week.

First Bite Boulder Coming Up

While I'm usually engaged in my own kitchen for dinners, the annual First Bite Boulder always catches my attention.  So many of our fine restaurants will be offering three course dinners for $26 from November 9th through the 17th, and its worth checking out, even for a diehard cooker like me.  It's also worth getting your reservation in early, as these tend to fill really quickly.

Weekend Dinner Ideas

In the spirit of simplifying both my ideas and my reporting in order to keep this blog going on very limited time, here's a quick rundown for the weekend.  With weather looking pretty good and the plunge into evening darkness looming with daylight savings on Sunday, we'll hit the grill (perhaps for the last time this year) both tonight and tomorrow.  Tonight's will be the Atlantic salmon from today's one-day sale at Whole Foods (look below for the post on that), and tomorrow will be the boneless top sirloin that Sprouts currently has for $4.99 a pound.  All accompaniments will be improvised (organic yams 99 cents a pound at Sprouts, but I just told myself to stop adding detail, and can't quite yet do it).

For Sunday, we'll turn to a recipe I haven't done for a couple of years, chicken paprikash from Cooking Light, capitalizing on the boneless skinless chicken breasts that are $1.99 a pound at Sprouts this week.  I'll be sure to make a big batch, to have more for an easy midweek reheat.

So this post was much faster than usual, and I'm going to try to keep them trimmed down in the future, but hopefully still of some use.

Heads Up Re Vitamin Cottage Sale

Happy November!  Just a note that the current sale at Vitamin Cottage ends on Saturday, the 3rd.  You can see my prior coverage of the sale here, but the big question is what will be happening with my beloved Imagine organic broths and cooking stocks.  Having them on sale for $2.49 a box currently has been a great help (especially for the pricier cooking stocks), as my laid-in supplies from past sales are long gone, but as the holidays approach, we've been known to see even lower prices.  I guess this is grocery shopping meeting Vegas odds-making.