Photo: Paulette Phlipot

If chicken is the no-brainer of dinner foundations--it's fast and easy to prepare and can go in a million directions--why do side dishes throw us for such a loop sometimes? It's not that assembling a salad and some baked potatoes is so difficult...but the two can start to seem a little blah.

Author and food writer Cheryl Sternman Rule, who writes the blog 5 Second Rule, is here with inspiration. She's matched seven of the most popular ways to serve chicken--from barbecued to marsala--with sides from her new cookbook, Ripe, that are anything but snooze-inducing.

Rule has a hang-up, you see, that's a powerful defense against boring salads or pilafs: color. She and photographer Paulette Phlipot are so obsessed, they arranged their book into sections on red fruits and vegetables like beets and pomegranates, orange ones such as apricots and yams, and so on. Check out this Oprah.com slideshow for her creative ideas (the fried chicken go-with, Honeydew Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing, is reason enough). And next time you feel like chicken (tonight?), you can make an accompaniment that just might steal the show.

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