I usually peruse the Union Square Greenmarket on my lunch breaks. In the case of these beans, however, I was stopped dead in my tracks on my way into the office in the morning. They are bright purple.

I rinsed and tasted one as soon as I got to work. It has the exact same taste as a green bean, is bright green inside, but the rich aubergine color is just too pretty. A little bit of Googling informed me that cooking purple beans fades the color to green. In the interest of pretty food, I decided to keep them raw and serve them in a warm vinaigrette.

I also got really handy with one of my collage apps.

I took inspiration for the dressing from a Williams-Sonoma recipe I pinned ages ago. I ended up using the following ingredients:

2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
2 chive cubes in olive oil

I melted the cubes, added in the sugar and mustard and stirred, then whisked in the vinegar. I could have used markedly less of the vinegar to make a thicker dressing, but the flavor overall was outrageous. Spicy, sweet, and tangy on top of crunchy fresh beans.

I served this alongside pork chops and it was a great complement. I can usually figure out main dishes pretty easily, but draw blanks often when it comes to side dishes. Do you have that problem, too? I hope I can think of this one during future meal planning and will try and feature more Simple Side Dish recipes down the line!

Grapefruit Pork & Avocado-Dressed Brussels Salad

We got back from the beach Saturday afternoon and after a long day of driving, my husband made the excellent decision to go out to eat. Two bar stools at our favorite neighborhood French bistro, oysters, beet salad, yummy wine, and big savory bowls of moules... it was a good homecoming. Even while swirling my wine glass along to "Sous Le Ciel De Paris", I knew that we had leftovers from the beach house we needed to use up promptly. For Sunday night, I planned on using the big bottle of grapefruit juice (half of which went to cocktails) for a pork tenderloin marinade.

The recipe calls for:

- juice of one large grapefruit (I used 3/4 cup bottled juice)
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped (I used 2 teaspoons garlic powder)
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 tsp Hungarian paprika (we have sweet and hot - I used hot)
- a bunch of fresh thyme (I melted 3 of my thyme cubes and added fresh olive oil to reach 1/4 c)
- 6 lbs pork tenderloin (HA! This was a surprise as I read through the recipe. I used a 1.5 lb 'loin.)

I poked some holes in the pork with the tip of a paring knife and put it in the marinade around 10 am so it could soak up the sauce most of the day. The original recipe has you throw this on the grill to cook, but I just poured the pork and marinade into a casserole and baked it.

The verdict? It wasn't super flavorful. It was fine. It was actually kinda meh, which is SHOCKING to me because the recipe called for this volume of marinade to work for six (!) pounds of pork tenderloin.

The only reason I can come up with is that I didn't grill the pork and the grilling would have upped the flavor ante. It is a mystery to me. That said, I would try this again and reduce the remaining marinade into a thicker sauce/glaze to pour over the top. I mean, paprika and grapefruit juice. I want this all over pork all the time.

The redeemer of this meal? The whackadoodle mix of things that went into the Brussels salad.

- thinly sliced Brussels sprouts (probably 10 - 12 sprouts)
- snack-sized box of Craisins
- grated aged Asiago, shy of 1/4 cup
- pistachios

All but the Brussels were items we took to the beach house and brought home with us. The dressing was made of leftovers, too. Mom introduced me to Avocado's Number (math nerds, get at it!), a pre-packaged guacamole you can buy at Trader Joe's. I'd opened one the last day of vacation to use as a sandwich spread and had the leftovers in a Ziploc bag. I scooped the remainder into a bowl, added a drizzle of pistachio oil (a fun flavored oil in my pantry that is killer in salad dressings, especially when featuring pistachios whole), and enough white balsamic vinegar to loosen up the guac, probably 1/2 cup all in.

It was OUTRAGEOUSLY good. This truly sounds so weird but it worked so well. The archetypal salad dressing is fat, acid, and flavors, right? This had the fat from the avocado (and bit of oil), the acid from the vinegar, and the flavors already mixed into the guacamole. It was creamy and bright but with a lot of boldness from the guac flavors.

All in, the things I purchased for this dinner were a pork tenderloin and a little cardboard bowl of Brussels sprouts. I love repurposing leftovers!

Red Onion & Sausage Stromboli

Sometimes I'm halfway through preparing a meal when I remember that I like to blog about the food I cook. This is one of those meals.

I spent my lunch break wandering the Union Square Greenmarket and one regular stand is DiPaola Turkeys. They sell turkey sausage in or out of casing and it's graced many a sauce and pizza in my kitchen. Recalling that I had a store-bought pizza crust hanging out in the back of my fridge after wiping out of another recipe, I grabbed some of the sweet sausage and had a great chat with the woman at the stand.

At home, I used up what I had on hand - a 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes, shredded part skim mozzarella, and a red onion. I browned all of the sausage and spooned it out on to a paper towel-covered plate. I also cooked the onions for a little bit in the remaining sausage grease because raw red onions give me stomach aches. I only had them in about five minutes just to take the edge off before baking. Once I removed the onions, I cooked up the sauce in the same pan with some thyme (from cubes!) and minced garlic.

I rolled the dough out flat on my largest baking tray with a Silpat and topped with the sauce, sausage, onions, and cheese. I hated the shape that I'd achieved - not really a rectgangle, completely uneven on one side, so I made a game time decision to switch the pizza to a stromboli (a rolled up pizza, effectively).

Carefully (but mostly spazzily) I rolled up the dough into a long tube. The descriptor I received from the peanut gallery was, "It looks like a fat pizza baby." Your mouth is watering, yes?

Once rolled, I baked at 400 degrees for about 10 - 15 minutes until the top was golden brown. After it cooled for a bit, I transferred it to a platter and cut it into thick slices.

I served the slices with a simply dressed greens salad and dug in. I'm so glad I pre-cooked the onions - they still retained their pretty purple hue, albeit a bit lighter, but they were sweeter and softer. The sausage was perfectly seasoned and worked perfectly with the onion and garlicky sauce. If you want a twist - or, more accurately, roll - on your pizza night, just make it into a stromboli!

Grilled Balsamic Honey Chicken

We're back from the beach! I'm breaking out all over from aggressive applications of sunscreen, I'm peeling on the tops of my feet and a silver dollar-sized spot on my knee where I failed to get aggressive with the sunscreen, and I'm oh so very happy to have spent a week next to the ocean.

All but one of our dinners were cooked on the grill. We had your standard dogs and brats night, a hamburger night, an extremely successful Old Bay Pork Tenderloin night, but these chicken skewers were a hit - especially with two palates under the age of 10. I enlisted the help of the 9 year old to mix the marinade and the help of the 8 year old to shake it around in the Ziploc bag. The best sous chefs are cute ones, right?

The recipe itself is from Foodie Crush. I made it twice this summer at home on our grill pan and was psyched to try it on an actual outdoor gas grill. It was worth the wait!

I started prep right after breakfast by cutting up about 3 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts - there were 6 breasts total. They went into a big Ziploc with some fresh rosemary. I left it whole because it allows the flavors to infuse into the marinade and chicken, but then you take it out to cook so the kids don't complain about "green stuff" once it's on the plate.

The marinade is straightforward and delicious. If a 9 year old can do it, you can too. Promise. The basic measurements per the Foodie Crush starter recipe are 2-2-1 honey-balsamic vinegar-olive oil (she calls for 3 tablespoons of honey overall, but only 2 go in the marinade). I doubled this since we had more chicken, but tripling it would have also rocked - basically ours had the flavor infused but wasn't overly saucy. Also add two cloves of chopped garlic and as much fresh (or dried) rosemary as you like.

I let this marinate until dinner time. Once we all got back from the beach that afternoon, I put a bunch of wooden skewers into water to soak. Then I added about 5 - 6 pieces of chicken to each skewer. I also was able to photograph food with natural light instead of my regular NYC Apartment Fluorescence and was absolutely beside myself.

I also would like to give my mom full styling credit for the addition of the rosemary after strong urging to, "Make it pretty!"

This meal really was a group effort - the kids did the marinade, I did the cubing and skewering, so the husband did the grilling.

After I went back inside to finish setting up the table, he was even so kind as to snap a couple of pictures once he flipped the skewers over. Such a keeper, I tell ya.

The adults ate these alongside a fresh, tangy, and crunchy broccoli salad that Mom prepared - quickly steamed florets, craisins, pistachios, and a mayo-based dressing kicked up with a little pepper and sriracha - which was sadly not photographed. Neither was the kids' boxed mac and cheese. Everyone humored me while I took pictures of the final tray, but then we were all ready to dig in.

The chicken is divine. The sweetness from the honey and balsamic helps get those perfectly charred grill marks on the chicken. For a non-kid crowd, I might even toss in a teaspoon of chili flakes, but the garlic really does just fine in giving you a counter flavor to the sweetness. You could certainly make this on pork, too, and I think in future iterations I'd want to reserve and reduce the marinade into a glaze of sorts. The grilled chicken would even be great on top of salad! Now I'm getting carried away, so the bottom line is this: it's not difficult to make, kids loved it, and it's delicious. Enjoy!

Turkey Taco Mini Meatloaves

I'm about four years late to the Cook Things In Muffin Tins That Aren't Muffins Or Cupcakes trend, but now that I'm here, I love it. I've already made mini frittatas and also recently (twice!) made mini meatloaves.

I got inspired by Ambitious Kitchen's recipe - I'd never thought to use quinoa (or really any non-bread item) as a binder in meatloaf. It's a double whammy of protein, too. Hers look deliciously packed full of fresh veggies, but I was serving these to kids and totally dumbed them down. My blend was ground turkey, 1/3 cup of cooked quinoa, an egg, and a whole bunch of taco spices (chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, etc.).

I sprinkled some shredded taco cheese on top and popped them into a 350° oven. I checked them after about 15 minutes and took them out of the oven closer to 18 minutes.

Juicy meat with a lighter texture from the airy quinoa plus a cheesy baked top? These look, smell, and taste incredible.

I served them up with your run of the mill taco toppings: cool crunchy romaine (the least offensive of lettuces when you feed salad to the Under 10 set), diced avocado, grape tomatoes, and of course, more cheese.

This was a wonderful summer plate. The mini meatloaves were really hearty, but still light because of the quinoa. I could even describe them as a little flaky? They just weren't as dense as regular meatloaf and it was a welcome textural change. The spices and cheese made these a spot-on taco night hit. I've done the 'taco' version of these twice now and they keep in the fridge really well. I think my next try on these will go down a more Italian route - basil, oregano and mozzarella on top!