Events at Sunflower

Our Boulder Sunflower has a string of events on its calendar, with a "featured product sampling" from 4:30 to 6:30 today, a product sampling for cheese lovers from noon to 2 tomorrow, and an "everything pumpkin!" event Saturday, featuring pumpkin food samples and recipes from 11 to 1.

New Deals Are Up

New sale prices for our Boulder natural foods stores are up on the left, crowding in with the deals ending today. Not as exciting a sale week as last week, but there are still some specials of interest. The asparagus sale mantle passes from Sprouts through today to Sunflower for next week (with the price upping from 77 cents to 99 cents a pound). Of particularly note, don't forget that Sprouts' two-week Gluten-Free Jubilee is in its final week, with 25% off the tons of tagged gluten-free products throughout the store. Even for those of us without gluten issues, this is a really good deal - subtracting the wheat often means boosting the flavor (try Crunchmaster crackers or Pamela's gluten-free cookies to be blown away) and you can even stock up on basics like Lundberg rice.

Sunflower Now Open in Lafayette

The new Sunflower is having its grand opening today in Lafayette (and a new store in Thornton, too), and it's a festive scene. The store is located on South Boulder Road, just east of 287. I got there early, but not early enough for one of the 200 special grocery bags (rumor had it only those who were in line by 6:30 managed to snag those). I did still get yet another regular free reusable bag with my purchase to add to my collection. The store is crowded, but they've smartly brought in some seasoned employees from other stores to help keep the service running smoothly through the crush of people. There are some grand opening specials exclusive to the store, like 17 oz bottles of Sunflower's own extra virgin olive oil for $4.99, and I overheard several happy shoppers commenting on how great it will be to not have to drive so far for their natural foods shopping. A welcome addition to Boulder County's natural foods empire. Meanwhile, that excursion delayed my usual highlighting of the new deals starting in our stores today, but I hope to have that info posted a little later. Thanks for your patience.

In Praise of Imagine Broth

I'm so, so pleased that Whole Foods has Imagine's wonderful organic broths on sale for $2.50 each for one quart boxes through November 2nd. That's an exceptional price on its own, but you can even improve it further with the $1 off purchase of two boxes coupon that you can find either online or in the hard copy Whole Deal newsletter in the store. With soup and stew season upon us, and the holidays coming up, this is the time to lay in a good supply of broth, be it chicken, beef, veggie, whatever. Imagine's is particularly good (not just my saying so - Cook's Illustrated found their chicken broth superior in a taste test a few years back), and I'm especially fond of their organic, low sodium free range chicken broth. The broths also have no MSG, something you might be surprised to find masquerading under one of its many names in other broths on the shelves of our natural food stores. If you don't get a chance to take advantage of this great sale, Whole Foods' own 365 organic broths are a good deal at $1.99 everyday (and the chicken also comes in a low sodium version), but I'd grab the Imagine while it's comparably priced with the coupon.

One-Day Sale at Whole Foods Tomorrow

Tomorrow only, our local Whole Foods stores will be offering a quartet of sale items at pretty darned good prices. Three of them would go together for a tailgate party: Continental brats half off at $2.99 for 12 oz, a six pack of bratwurst buns to go with them for $2 (regularly $2.99), and traditional potato salad half off at $2.99 a pound. Also on sale will be Evol premium burritos at $2 each, which is $1.69 off a 7 oz burrito. I haven't yet tried these new premium ones, but based on how incredibly delicious their regular ones are, I'm betting they're fantastic. In addition to being convenient, they're also local, made from great ingredients, and by a company with strong sustainability values. If you miss tomorrow's one-day sale price, you can still catch them at a pretty good price, as Whole Foods has Evols for $2.50 each in their regular sale, lasting through November 2nd.

Free Shipping But Shop Local Anyway

If you're looking to expand on some of your kitchen wares before the holiday season is upon us, you might be interested in knowing that Chef's Catalog is offering free standard shipping on any size order (excludes some obvious things like their wine club) if you enter promo code BW1EM6085 through October 24th. They frequently offer free shipping on orders topping $99, but this unrestricted freebie is a rarity. However, if you're looking for excellent customer service, good advice, and highly competitive pricing, I'd suggest you shop our own local Peppercorn first. For the items I've priced, Peppercorn's prices were identical to those listed by web retailers like Chef's, plus you get the warm fuzzy of helping our local economy, and the fun of being in a real store with real people.

New Lafayette Sunflower Opening This Week

The grand opening of the new Sunflower store at 555 West South Boulder Road in Lafayette will be this Wednesday, the 20th, at 7 am. The first 200 customers through the door will get reusable grocery bags filled with groceries (assuming you purchase something, too), and if you miss that, you'll probably get one of the thousands of free grocery bags they'll be giving out with your purchase. I have the special commemorative bag they created for the first customers at the Boulder store opening, and wonder if it will be as cool for the Lafayette opening. A welcome expansion eastward for the Boulder County natural foods empire!

The Rest of This Week's Dinner Ideas

We're set on our dinner plans through today, but it's time to get going on the weekday plans. We've had sweet potatoes and a pasta dish already, so it's time to base something on rice. The asparagus that's only 97 cents a pound at Sprouts is still very much on my mind, so we'll go for asparagus and leek risotto with prosciutto from Bon Appetit. As usual, the prosciutto will come from the Whole Foods cheese and cold cut counter, where you can buy chunks of prosciutto for cooking at nearly half the price of the thinly sliced stuff.

Then, since we've made a big pot of sweet potato and sausage soup over the weekend, that will serve as a quickly reheated midweek dinner too, accompanied by a tossed salad and some bread. Nothing better than making dinner in about ten minutes.

It's about time for something with an Asian spin, and my basil pots need to be totally finished off because of this week's frost-threatening temperatures, and with pork stew meat on sale at Sunflower for just $2.79 a pound at Sunflower, that spells garlic pork with tomato and basil from Cooking Light. This usually gets served over brown rice, but since rice was already on the menu a couple of days ago, it will probably go over soba noodles instead, a delicious and very quick-cooking option.

Finally, to finish off the week's planning, we'll try a good-looking recipe from the current issue of Cooking Light, mushroom and sausage ragu with polenta, catching the chicken sausage that's on sale at both Sprouts and Sunflower before the sale ends Wednesday. Polenta can sound daunting but is actually really easy, and is readily available (and cheap) in the bulk aisle. It's interesting to note that the first recipe reviewer thinks there's a typo in the liquid called for in the recipe. Since I make polenta in a three to one ratio of liquid to polenta, I'd agree that the recipe looks too wet, and will adjust accordingly.

And that will get us through the week until next Friday's new set of plans.

Cooking Class at Superior Whole Foods

The Whole Foods store in Superior will be holding a soups and bread cooking class this coming Wednesday, the 20th, from 6:30 to 8:30 in the evening. There is a charge for this one, $10 that needs to be prepaid when you register at their customer service desk.

A Spectacular Day for the Boulder Farmers' Market

On this stunningly beautiful fall day, everybody and his brother has decided to turn out for the Boulder Farmers' Market. If you don't mind the crowds, there's plenty to see, buy, and eat. Munson Farm has reappeared, with lots of winter squash and gourds, but their corn is of course of the decorative variety by now (sniff, I do miss their summer corn). Red Wagon Organic Farm has spectacular Brussels sprouts on stalks that are over two feet long, selling for $7 each (impress your dinner guests). Full Circle Farm still has their roaster there, roasting their wonderful certified organic chiles. Organic tomatoes are a pretty good deal, selling everywhere at $3 a pound, same price as the non-organics (and I even saw one non-organic stand selling theirs for $4 a pound). Not a bad price, since you'd probably pay more at Whole Foods, although Sunflower often has organic romas for $1.99 a pound. You have until 2 today to head out, enjoy some food and music in the food court, and shop around for fresh, local produce.