fried eggplant balls, mustard braised green beans and pancetta pappardelle with stewed tomatoes

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this was probably one of the best dinners I made all year. Nathan helped, but this was mostly my endeavor, and both he and Laura had nothing but good things to say about the meal. When you've got some crispy fried goodness, a tasty, honest-to-goodness healthy vegetable, and a really solid pasta dish, that's pretty much a guaranteed recipe for a first rate feast.

two fritattas: chard, tomato and potato, and bacon, cauliflower and parmesan

A frittata is basically a big fat omelet that you don't have to worry about struggling to flip, because it bakes in the oven. You can put in all sorts of things in a frittata, which makes them a great thing to do with leftovers, and you can scale a frittata I recently (more or less) made two different varieties to use up food co-op veggies. First, we have one with swiss chard, tomatoes and potatoes, which was kind of French seeming, like a crustless quiche, and very nice. Second is a cauliflower and bacon parmesan frittata-- a little more breakfasty, but just as filling and delicious.

green bean, fennel and pickled red onion salad/caramelized fennel and onions

I am kind of excited to tell you about these two dishes. They both fit right in with the type of cooking that I usually do, but were still somehow refreshingly different from my everyday meals. First is the Smitten Kitchen's green bean fennel and pickled red onion salad, which I made because I had a ton of food co-op green beans. Then, I jumped at the chance to use up the rest of the fennel, caramelized with onions, in this recipe from Simply Recipes.

beet risotto

So what do you do when you don't like beets and your food co-op keeps providing them by the bushel? (I have to admit, I don't actually know how much a bushel is, but I suspect it is rather a large amount, so even though we get lots and lots of beets, I am probably exaggerating here.) Make something that I really really really like, and hope that it makes the boring beets more enjoyable. And so, beet risotto!