Sauteed Chicken with Zucchini & Summer Squash

Summer's a great time to play with produce, whether you grow it in your own backyard, hit up the local market, or head to the farmer's market to pick up something that somebody else grew in their backyard.

Here's an easy dish with lots of flavor that combines the tastes of fresh zucchini, summer squash, and tomatoes. You can grill the chicken instead of cooking it in a skillet if you like.

Zucchini Stew with Tomatoes and Onions

Wow, I did not mean to go more than two whole months without posting any new recipes! But school's finally out for summer, and I have a few things up my sleeve to share.

It's still a little early in my neck of the woods for most of our local produce to make an appearance, but one vegetable that has a recurring role at my dinner table is zucchini. There are many, many ways to prepare this veggie, but my favorite (and one of the few ways my husband will willingly eat it), is a sort of Italian-style stew with onions and tomatoes. My mom used to make this all the time when I was a kid, and for some reason we referred to it as "fixed" zucchini. Not necessarily because other ways of cooking zucchini were "broken", of course, but I think because it was "fixed up" with herbs and such.

This family recipe is very easy and can be adjusted for any number of servings. If you serve it with some nice crusty bread, it can stand in as a light main course, perhaps for lunch. It also pairs well with grilled chicken as a side dish. I still recommend crusty bread to sop up all the juices.

Fried Polenta with Italian Vegetables (Meatless Meals for Lenten Fridays)

Polenta is kind of a weird food. It's basically cornmeal that's cooked into a sort of paste, and depending on the consistency, can be served either as a soft, almost pudding like base for Mexican and Italian dishes alike, or shaped into a sort of sausage that can later be sliced and fried.

This dish, based on the Fried Polenta with Vegetable Marinara from The Pampered Chef 29 Minutes to Dinner cookbook, requires the use of the second type of polenta. I've made it a couple times before, and this time I played quite a bit with the veggies to make it more my own.

You can make your own polenta, but it's also readily available in most grocery stores.

Continue reading to find out how I made this, my way.

Baked Tilapia with Roasted Zucchini, Penne, and White Wine Cream Sauce

Prepare to drool a little bit, oh ye fish lovers out there....

I find tilapia to be a relatively versatile fish, as it's on the mild end of fishiness and there are a gazillion different ways to prepare it.

Of course, I generally just make lemon pepper tilapia.  Which is delicious, and we love it, but it's not very glamorous.

I got a little bit adventurous last night, despite the fact that it was a Monday, I was tired, my brain was still fried from having done 24 report cards in about three and a half hours straight over the weekend, and I was trying to get the house straightened out for a dinner party I'm hosting Thursday night.

The result was this:

What was particularly beautiful is the fact that it was a three-pan meal (a baking sheet, a sauce pan, and my melting pot).  And it only took 40 minutes start to finish, and only about 15 of that was hands-on work.  And I also managed to make this entire dish without using a single grain of salt.