Beet salad and tomatoes, beans, and bacon

Tonight, with P home, I made two more veggie-centric recipes, with the goal of keeping the meat as a side dish. I turned to Mark Bittman's newest cookbook, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express: 404 inspired seasonal dishes you can make in 20 minutes or less. This cookbook is fantastic for quick and creative recipes that use seasonal veggies - perfect for trying to use lots of vegetables from the CSA box.

Tonight's dinner?

• A raw beet salad, which I added a couple of carrots to from an earlier week. I pulsed the beets and carrots in the food processor with a large shallot, and tossed with parsley from the balcony garden, olive oil, sherry vinegar, large grain Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper.
  
• Wax beans and tomatoes sauteed with bacon and onion. After cooking the onion and bacon until the bacon was crisp and the onion was soft, I sauteed the beans until they were crisp-tender, then cooked the tomatoes in the mix until they wilted a bit.
  
• Barbecue chicken. Just some roasted chicken legs with some store-bought barbecue sauce painted on.

The vegetables were definitely the star - and with some bread, it would have been enough for dinner without the chicken. So far, trying to put vegetables center-stage is a success!