Challenge
The rainbow week challenge
Seven days, one produce color each, one dish idea to hang the day on. It's a game, not a test — cook big or cook lazy, swap any color you don't fancy, and finish the week with everything on one plate.
Here is a small game to play with your cooking for one week. Each day, you pick a color, and you let one thing on your plate come from that color. That's it. That is the whole challenge. There is no scoring, no photo to post, no box to tick, and absolutely no way to fail it — a day where you forget entirely is just a day, and the color waits for you tomorrow. I like this game because it turns "eat more variety" from a vague, slightly nagging idea into seven cheerful little decisions, each of which takes about ten seconds at the market. You are not overhauling your kitchen. You are giving yourself a loose theme to shop against, the way you might pick a movie by genre instead of scrolling forever. By the end of the week you look back and realize you cooked across the whole spectrum without once feeling like you were on a program. The dishes below are suggestions, not assignments. If Tuesday's idea bores you, keep the color and cook whatever you like in it. The color is the only rule, and even the color bends.
How to play it (loosely)
Run the days in any order you want. Monday-to-Sunday is tidy, but if red produce is what's cheap and good the day you shop, start there and let the rest fall where it falls. Each day has two parts: a dish idea to get you moving, and a quick note on what to look for at the market so you're not standing there guessing. Cook the dish, cook a cousin of it, or just chop the color raw onto whatever you were making anyway — all of those count. The one thing I'd gently suggest is not to skip the market note, because half the fun of this week is buying a color you don't usually reach for and being a little surprised by it.
Think of it as seven small dates with the produce aisle, not a diet. The reward is a week of dinners that don't blur together — and one very good-looking plate at the end.
The seven days
Day 1 — Red
Dish: Shakshuka. Tomatoes and red peppers cooked down soft, eggs cracked into the pockets, bread to mop it. Loud, warm, forgiving.
Market note: Buy tomatoes that feel heavy for their size and smell like something at the stem end. If fresh ones are pale, canned whole tomatoes make a better shakshuka than sad winter fruit — no shame in it.
Day 2 — Orange
Dish: Roasted carrot and squash soup, blitzed smooth, finished with a swirl of cream and a crack of pepper. It's mostly the oven doing the work.
Market note: Squash should sound a little hollow and have a hard, matte skin — glossy means it was picked young. Carrots with the tops still on are usually the freshest ones on the table.
Day 3 — Yellow
Dish: Corn and yellow-pepper fritters, crisp at the edges, with a squeeze of lime. Or lean lazy: corn cut off the cob straight into a salad.
Market note: For corn, peel back a strip of husk and press a kernel — it should be plump and give a little. Yellow peppers are the sweetest of the bunch; pick the ones with taut, unwrinkled skin.
Day 4 — Green
Dish: Pesto pasta. Basil, garlic, nuts, cheese, oil — blitz and toss. Throw a handful of peas or green beans in the pasta water for the last two minutes and you've stacked two greens.
Market note: Herbs should stand up, not flop. Buy the biggest, cheapest bunch of basil you can find; this is the day to be greedy with it. Slap a leaf gently — it should smell loud.
Day 5 — Blue / Purple
Dish: Roasted eggplant with a garlicky yogurt, or a quick slaw of shredded red cabbage with a sharp dressing. Purple food always looks like you tried harder than you did.
Market note: An eggplant should feel light for its size and spring back when you press it — heavy and dull usually means seedy. Red cabbage keeps for ages, so buy a whole one and pick at it all week.
Day 6 — White / Tan
Dish: Creamy mushroom and cauliflower gratin, or a plain, excellent pot of white beans with garlic and rosemary. The quiet day, and often the coziest one.
Market note: Mushrooms want to be dry and firm, not slick. Cauliflower should have tight, cream-colored florets and crisp green leaves still hugging it — those leaves are the freshness tell.
Day 7 — Rainbow finale
Dish: A big sheet-pan roast or a loaded grain bowl using the leftovers of the whole week — a little red, a little orange, the last of the greens, some purple cabbage raw on top. One plate, all seven days, no shopping required.
Market note: None. This is the day you shop your own fridge, which is the cheapest market there is and the whole reward of the week.
The lazy version
Short on time or nerve? Don't cook a new dish at all. Just add that day's color, raw, to whatever you were already making — grated carrot, torn herbs, a few radish coins. The week still counts, and nobody's checking.
What surprises most people who try this is how little it asks and how much it changes. You are not adding hours to your week or a stack of unfamiliar recipes; you are adding a single color and letting it drag one interesting thing into the basket. Skip a day and the game shrugs. Repeat a color you loved and it shrugs at that too. By Sunday you've got a fridge that looks like a paint set and a finale plate that pulls it together. Play it once for the novelty. Play it twice and it just becomes how you shop.