Thursday: Red beet pasta

Penne pasta with red beet, rainbow chard, and walnuts.

The world of pasta sauces is truly vast: this is another of our favorite non-tomato-based options. We usually use goat cheese rather than walnuts, but it's good both ways.

Chard, for anyone unaware of this fact, is actually a variety of beet grown for its big, glossy leaves rather than for the root. For that reason, chard and beet greens are more or less interchangeable. (When we buy beets with nice-looking greens, we just use the beet tops in this recipe.)