Is it just me, or are there for sure a lot of pink-to-red-to-purple foods around at this time of year?

Over the last several weeks I’ve recently seen, prepared and served at home, in addition to tuna, of course, the usual meat suspects (including the smoked or cured) and the red or purple berries and fruit now only a memory, red beets, red chard, red mustard and kale, the red stems of beet greens, radicchio, pink, red or purple radishes, red onions, purple tomatoes and red potatoes, red sweet potatoes [see the Japanese sweets above, from Lani’s Farm] red cabbage, purple cauliflower and purple broccoli, and even purple kohlrabi.   And then there was also the bounty of the season just past:  tomatoes (red and sometimes even purple) available much later this year than in others, purple lettuces, red or purple bell peppers, and both purple string beans and purple okra.

I only became consciously aware of the red thing going on after plating several meals this fall.  The color scheme of last night’s dinner was similar to many of them, although, as with most, I managed also to include at least some green.

• four tiny (2.5 oz. each) pan-grilled kid goat chops from Patches of Star Dairy; accompanied by oven-roasted Japanese sweet potatoes from Lani’s Farm; and sauteed beet greens from the Queens County Farm Museum (meat and vegetables all from the Union Square Greenmarket)
• Bleu d’Auvergne from Bobolink Dairy at the Greenmarket, and Tome Corse Brebis from Citarella in the West Village
• wine:  Le Couvent de Chateau Peyros 1995 Madiran (Corbère-Abères), from Wine Messenger