Three-Cheese Stuffed Shells

I can't believe it's been over two months since I last posted a recipe. All I can say is that Mommyhood and the holidays combined to steal most of my free time.

Anyway, I have a new dinner recipe for you today. It's easy as can be, with hands-on time hovering around the 30-minute mark. They look a lot harder than they are and will impress your guests.

Here's what to do.

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.

Caprese Chicken

Back in November, I was looking for a new and tasty but easy to prepare dish that I could serve when we invited our priest to dinner. In my search, I discovered a creative recipe for Caprese chicken from The Novice Chef, and it turned out delicious.

Last night, in my efforts to finish up a few odds and ends around the kitchen, I realized I had the ingredients to make Caprese chicken again. But this time, I added a few slight twists to make it my own.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can easily multiply the ingredients to increase the servings - or just make it for one! Here's how I made it.

Spicy Sicilian Style Sauce (Meat Free for Lenten Fridays)

Since I'm finally getting back the energy and drive to cook again, it felt good to be in the kitchen, putzing with one of my favorite recipes. This was something I experimented with a couple summers ago when we had a boom year for tomatoes, and it was so tasty, this spicy Sicilian style sauce has become something of a standard in our house.

I'm not 100% sure if it's accurate to call this "Sicilian style", but based on what I saw and ate when I was actually in Sicily a few years ago, I think it's close enough.

Caprese Pizza from Pampered Chef (Meat-Free for Lenten Fridays)

In case you didn't know, The Pampered Chef has a variety of absolutely awesome cookbooks.  A cousin of mine had a Pampered Chef party back in November, and I bought their "29 Minutes or Less" cookbook.  I've tried several recipes, and plan to try several more, because the fact that I can eat these meals within a half hour of starting to prepare them is very attractive during the work week.

The Caprese pizza recipe has proven to be one of the "old reliable" recipes of the ones I've tried so far.  With the onset of the Lenten season, and thus the need for meatless Friday meals, I jumped all over this particular pizza last week because, lets face it, you can only stand pasta with marinara sauce or frozen fish chunks for so long.

I do deviate from the original recipe a bit, but not much.  Here's what I do.

Bleu Cheese Alfredo with Chicken and Spinach

A few years ago, I developed an alfredo sauce recipe from a couple recipes I found in books and online, and last weekend I decided to give it a go, with a little twist.

A bleu cheese twist.

It was incredibly quick to prepare, and I decided to mix in some cooked chicken and baby spinach to give it some extra nutrition, and to use up some chicken I'd cooked the day before.

The result was beautiful, and my husband, who isn't particularly a fan of alfredo, loved it.

Chicken Marsala with Oven Roasted Thyme Potatoes

I absolutely love Chicken Marsala.  I love it in restaurants, I love it at home.  I love that there are about a dozen different variations on the recipe.  It's a fantastic example of Italian cooking that wows just about anyone you serve it to.

Normally Chicken Marsala is served over pasta, either angel hair or linguini.  Last time I made it for dinner, I decided to deviate from the "norm" - probably because I was out of pasta. (A Sicilian out of pasta?  Sacrilege!)  Instead, I served it over oven roasted thyme potatoes.