Living alone or as a couple can prove to be a challenge come dinner time. When a recipe serves six but there's only two of you, it can be a bore to eat the same thing several days in a row. This is why I wanted to write a recipe today that was the perfect size: a hearty dinner salad just for two.

The first few times I tried kimchi it was not, I must admit, my favorite food. Then I met my Korean-American partner, Gregory, moved in with his mom — a superb cook — and within a few months I was wholly converted. These days my mouth waters at the slightest whiff of pungent, fermented cabbage and I'll eat it with everything from fried rice to dumplings, summer rolls, or, ahem, straight out of the jar. I still have a lot to learn from Mom when it comes to kimchi making (there are over a hundred different kinds!) but this mak kimchi, or simple kimchi, recipe has been a great place to start. 

May is usually the month when your local CSA starts gearing up for the soon-to-come avalanche of summer bounty.  Whether you live in warmer climes and are in the throes of strawberries, peas, asparagus from your year-round box or you're just starting up again after having the winter off, it's an exciting time for fresh, local produce.  But it can be a challenging time, too, especially when unfamiliar or overly abundant vegetables show up.  Read on for a roundup of tips to help you manage your CSA experience.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good green salad. But there is a whole world of quick, easy vegetable side dishes that don't involve lettuce. With recipes like sesame roasted snap peas, baked chili-spiked sweet potato chips and grilled cabbage with spicy lime dressing, you now have no excuse. Get out of that salad rut tonight!

Although spring is upon us and we should be taking full advantage of farmers' markets and fresh grocery store offerings, sometimes the frozen veggies still come in handy for last-minute dinner convenience. back is what's for dinner. In an effort to make them taste, less, well, frozen, here are five ways to help get the most flavor from our freezer friends! 

As the weather warms up, turning on the oven to roast a pan of vegetables stops being an option, but that doesn't mean you have to spend the next five months eating green salads or steamed broccoli. Instead, look to your grill — or a stovetop grill pan — to quickly transform vegetables into soft, smoky, irresistibly summery versions of themselves. Carrots are one of my favorites on the grill, their charred, sweet flavor needing just a squeeze of lemon and some fresh herbs to become a simple but surprising side dish.

Bok choy was not even on my radar before it started showing up in my first-ever CSA a few years back. At first I was baffled. What was this crunchy bulb-bottomed vegetable with its tender greens? But then me and bok choy? We hit our stride. Oh, boy, did we.

How would you like to come home tonight to the aroma of roasting potatoes and know that all you have to do is pull out a foil package and add the butter? Oh, yes, this kind of instant dinner gratification is totally possible. All you have to do is grab some potatoes and take your slow cooker down from the shelf.

I grew up in a household of musical-lovers. My sisters and mother and I spent hours snuggled up under blankets on the couch, watching Singing in the Rain and Brigadoon and other classics. One of our favorites was a 1935 piece of sparkling fluff called Naughty Marietta, with Jeanette MacDonald as a French princess who flees an loathsome marriage — all the way to the New World, where she meets the handsome Nelson Eddy, a militia captain who of course falls for her bubble-headed charm. 

Where is this going, and what does it have to do with roasted vegetables? There is a punchline in Naughty Marietta we loved to quote, giggling, where the practical captain indignantly instructs the princess in disguise, who has no idea how to cook a meal: "You don't cook a radish, you eat it alive!" Sorry, dear Nelson — you could sing the moon out of the sky, but you didn't know too much about radishes. 

As I was spooning my way through a bowl of strawberry-rhubarb ice cream this past weekend, I got to thinking. Strawberry and rhubarb are old pals, of course, and rhubarb is definitely great all on its own — but there are so many late-summer fruits that totally miss out on the rhubarb party! Rhubarb-peach? Blackberry-rhubarb? I want these combos in my pie! The best solution is to start freezing.