Friday Dinner

Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center has good prepared foods

that are sometimes sold at substantial discounts

On Friday nights, I like to take a break from cooking and get something that I can heat up or takes minimal preparation.  This is mostly true when my cleaning lady comes every other Friday.  I try to avoid using the stove and messing up the kitchen.  Usually, I get a rotisserie chicken - my dog Hubbell likes that choice.  But sometimes I go to the Whole Foods at Time Warner Center. They have many items on sale at big discounts. Not bad when you consider the restaurant Per Se is upstairs - where the prixe fixe is $295 a pop!

Shrimp cocktail

Last Friday, Whole Foods had shrimp on special.  It was $12 a pound.  I bought a half pound, which turned out to be a lot of shrimp.  I started dinner with shrimp cocktail.  I already had cocktail sauce in the fridge and I added some red horse raddish to give it a kick.  It was really delicious, and I had shrimp left over for another dinner later in the weekend.

Stuffed Clams

Whole Foods also has stuffed clams all the time.  For $3.99 you get a very generous portion.  I heated it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes and squeezed fresh lime juice on it before serving.  The shrimp and the stuffed clams were more than enough for dinner and the bill came out to just under $10.00.  And I still had one more meal to go!

Haul from Whole Foods on Friday night (this is about 1/2 of the shrimp)

On Saturday night I used ingredients from my pantry to make a second meal featuring the shrimp.  I made a delicious lemony pasta with shrimp, tomatoes, kalamata olives, lemon, parmesan cheese and arugula. 

Saturday night dinner

The usual suspects

Top with a healthy portion of parmesan cheese

Everyone in the pool!

I had the usual staples on hand and whipped up a lemony shrimp pasta dinner. I took the shrimp from the fridge and let them come to room temperature while I cooked everything else. I had my usual staples of cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, garlic and lemon - I sautéed them while I boiled linguine. Right before transferring the pasta from the boiling water to the saute pan, I added the shrimp to the mixture. Next the pasta along with a ladle full or so of the starchy pasta water.  At the end I added parmesan cheese.  I don't usually go for mixing cheese with fish, but in this case it worked.  When I transferred a serving to a large bowl, I tossed in a handful of arugula and mixed it in with the pasta and mixture - it was fresh arugula and worked like a charm.  It was nice to look at and tasted delicious.  I was in such a hurry to dig in I didn't get a great picture of the final product with the arugula mixed in with the pasta.

Et viola!

When you find something like shrimp on sale, get a big portion - and have it for dinner over two nights.  My dinners came out to $5 per night.  Not bad for a weekend in New York City!