The Colors of the Rainbow, in Recipes

Turkey, biscuits, mashed potatoes. Brown, yellow, beige. Boring! The comfort foods of this season, tasty as they are, ain’t pretty. Like all of those braises: big bowls of bubbling…brown.

Hey. Turn that frown upside down. Or, rather, open it wide, and start chomping, because there’s colorful stuff you can eat right now, too. Here’s how to Roy G. Biv your meals.

RED. Canned tomatoes are always in season. Make some simple tomato sauce.

ORANGE. Peel carrots into ribbons and dress them in rice vinegar and sesame seeds. Instant orange!

YELLOW. See all the yellow up in here? That’s thanks to a healthy dose of turmeric. You could also go the yellow beet route, but chicken is awesome.

GREEN. To transition smoothly from yellow into green, we give you sautéed mustard greens.

BLUE. For a subtler interpretation of the theme, we went with the tiny pockets of blue in blue cheese, which, in its dressing form, we will put on just about anything. Bonus: you can put extra bits on crackers. (Beige isn’t all bad.)

INDIGO. Easy-to-find frozen blueberries are ideal for this slab pie, which, when cut into, reveals more than just indigo. You’ll get blue, indigo, violet, the whole family of color.

VIOLET. This smoothie also uses frozen blueberries. It’s also more purple than purple is purple. (Wait, what? Oh, whatever, it’s pretty darn violet, right?) You could also go for figs or radicchio.