A Tour With Your Veggie Shopping

Tomorrow at 9 (and on the first Saturday of each month), the Boulder-Dushanbe Sister City non-profit will be offering a free tour of the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. So you can tour this treasure for an hour, then shop for your veggies just steps away at the Farmers Market.

Kentucky Derby's Tomorrow

If you're looking for ways to toast and lift a fork to the Kentucky Derby tomorrow, Bon Appetit as usual has a pretty nice guide. If making mint juleps, Black Cat Farm has had mint at the Boulder Farmers Market for the past two weeks, so I bet they'll have some great stuff at their stand there tomorrow, as well.

Nice Plastic Reductions At Whole Foods

In making last night's fettucine with peas, asparagus, and pancetta, I used a bag of frozen peas from Whole Foods' own 365 brand, and was pleased to see that the lighter-feeling bag proclaims that "our new bag uses 25% less plastic." Nice move, that will hopefully influence some other brands to do the same. Also, at least at the Pearl Street store, plastic bags have recently been replaced with paper ones in the bulk section. Closure of a paper bag containing dry goods that would love to spill out everywhere on the way home is going to take some practice, but it seems like a good adjustment, and plastic bags are still available in the produce department if something just won't work with the paper bags.

Starting on This Week's Dinners

With rain/snow in the forecast for as long as five days (it's snowing like crazy right now!), are we back to thinking about the foods of winter? Maybe, maybe not.

My first choice, grilled sea scallops and tomatoes with olive vinaigrette (originally published in Gourmet) has a spring-like lightness, especially with its arugula base, but is prepared on a grill pan, safely indoors. Arugula from a store would be fine, or I could wait another day and get it at the Boulder Farmers Market. Sprouts has sea scallops on sale this week, and this pairs well with a freshly baked bread, maybe the seeduction bread from Whole Foods.

The weather also gives us another opportunity to enjoy a warming chowder, and with the Farmers Market full of potatoes and parsnips, that suggests potato and root vegetable chowder with bacon from Bon Appetit.

Then I have a dilemma, as I have a weakness for grilled country style ribs, which are on sale this week at Sunflower. Perhaps we'll have a break in the weather somewhere, permitting outdoor cooking in comfort. Besides, these ribs are especially good smoked, which means the grill cover would mostly be on, so maybe only the cook would be exposed to the elements if it continues to rain or snow. Heck, the cook can wear a rain jacket. So long as the ribs don't get snowed on, think this one's on the menu.

More ideas to come shortly.

New Sale Prices Are Up

Using a combo of hard copy and flyers on screen, this week's new deals are posted on the left, along with the sales expiring today at Sprouts and Sunflower. Looks like the major news of the week is coming from Sprouts, with avocados at 25 cents each, and a 25% off gluten-free product jubiliee starting today, and running all the way through June 2nd. Even if you aren't gluten intolerant, this sale affects tons of yummy products (I swear gluten-free cookies are held together with extra chocolate), and you can think about stocking up on things like Lundberg rice, if you like it.

Working on Getting the Best Sale Prices

How annoying. My copy of today's local paper has ads only for Safeway and King Soopers. With Sprouts, Sunflower, and Whole Foods all missing, I'd bet it's the paper's fault. Since I pay the Camera's high hard copy subscription fee primarily for the convenience of the ad content, that's pretty irritating. Since it's so much easier to make comparisons across the store offerings using hard copy rather than the screen, I'll need to wait to post a summary of this week's new best deals until I've picked up the flyers myself. Meanwhile, you can check them online, at Sprouts, Sunflower, and Whole Foods. And remember that both Sprouts and Sunflower overlap their sales on Wednesdays, so their prices in the left sidebar remain good through today.

Leek Prices on the Move

Looking for leeks for tonight's asparagus and leek risotto with prosciutto, I bypassed the bundled organic leeks that were $1.99/lb at Sunflower in favor of the nice, long, loose leeks I recently saw at Whole Foods for the same price, unusually low for them. Of course that meant, at least at the Pearl Street Whole Foods, they're bumped back up today to their more usual $2.99/lb. Oh well, can't sweat every detail.

More Dinners For This Week

Haven't quite finished planning for this week's dinners, but most is in place. Horrors, they're changing the forecast for today, moving showers up as early as six this evening, and I've already committed to ginger-soy grilled steak from Bon Appetit, using the top sirloin on sale at Sunflower, with grilled yam spears on the side. Am also planning on skillet greens with cumin and tomatoes, also from Bon Appetit, using the kale and hothouse tomatoes (rather than drained canned ones called for) on sale at Sunflower. Worst case, if the showers do move in early, is that the steak will wind up on the grill pan and the yam spears in the oven, so it all works.

It would then be time for a rice dish, and one of my spring favorites is asparagus and leek risotto with prosciutto. Organic leeks are not bad at $1.99/lb right now at Whole Foods, where they also have cooking prosciutto for dicing available in the deli, but nobody is running a great deal on asparagus, so I'll take what I find. This dish is also good made with snap peas instead of asparagus.

Last night's sausage and lentils with spinach made so much, it just might find itself reheated for a super easy dinner. A word of caution regarding lentils: I used French green lentils instead of the brown ones called for, because I only found green or French green when I happened to be at Whole Foods. I've used their French ones before and didn't notice a big difference in cooking time, but last night they took a good three times the amount of time called for in the recipe for the brown variety.

I'd then be looking for a pasta dish, and am thinking of trying fettuccine with peas, asparagus, and pancetta, which is the cover recipe of the new May issue of Bon Appetit. Looks like I could add some of the green garlic I picked up at this week's Farmers Market. The 1/3 cup whipping cream is so small, I might leave it in for the flavor, but what to do with the remaining 2/3 cup of pure calories and cholesterol?

Still one more dinner to figure out, maybe it will be a surprise.

Boulder Farmers Market - What's Happening Today

In its third week of spring, the themes of spinach and braising mix of course are with us at the Farmers Market, with lots of organic starter plants available for your garden, too. My big score was green garlic and sorrel at Red Wagon Organic Farm. Here's generally what I saw among my favorite organic farms: spinach and their own honey at Red Wagon Organic (in addition to the green garlic and sorrel), purple Peruvian potatoes, shallots, asparagus (new!), spinach, and lots of organic starter plants at Pachamama Organic, and braising mix and lots of starter plants at Cure Organic. Abbondanza has roasted Big Jim peppers, presumably frozen from last fall's harvest, if you need some to carry you through to this season's roasting time. And Black Cat (of the Boulder restaurant fame) continues to have the most eclectic offerings: rapini, chervil, mint, chives, and wild arugula, in addition to the usual spinach and braising mix, plus they have an early jump on salad mix. I was happy to see Modmarket, offering soup, salads, and sandwiches, join the vendors in the food court. I'm still hoping to see Denver's wonderful Le Central restaurant show up, as was reported to be expected in the Daily Camera. The mood was festive and crowded under the cloudy skies, with four guys harmonizing soulfully in the food court. Sure sign that the crowds have picked up: cars now circle like vultures for a parking space in the 14th Street city lots by the market. Parking will shortly need to be farther afield, and hopefully better biking weather will be in the forecast, too.

Last Call for 20% Off at Sunflower

Reminder - today is the last day of Sunflower's three-day sale of 20% off all organic produce. The 20% off even applies to organic veggies that are already on sale, like kale or hothouse tomatoes, making them even better deals.