Holy Crap! Baked & Sliced Polenta with Tasty Goodness of Fresh Zucchini

KELLY * July 13 * Dinner

Just fyi, the "holy crap" was Liz's actual response to the dinner. It's a good day and can I again say how much I love Liz being home in the summer. Kelly's summer dinners have more historically been strings of tacos, occasional salads, etc. The variety of tastiness this summer is amazing! Anyway, because of the grandiose salad on Sunday (and the particular foods we got this week), we are short on veg and need to make a serious meat and starch oriented trip to the grocery store. Due to various polenta-buying mishaps in the past, we have a mess of polenta of various types. Tonight Liz went for the sliceable polenta with a very simple sautéed veg. I simply can't express how tasty it was. It truly is as if she is a genius. I can't say that her dad taught her to catch, throw, or change a tire (but my dad taught me all of that, so who cares). He did, however, teach her to cook the dickens out of dinner. Thank you Joe Flauto for raising me a dinner-making fool.

ELIZABETH * July 13 * Dinner

Holy Crap. It was VERY tasty. The polenta (tube variety) has actually been waiting for consumption since an epic Thanksgiving trip to Galucci's, a family holiday traditional grocery pilgrimage in Cleveland. In a (successful) attempt to avoid the additional chubbiness caused by pan-fried polenta slices, I brushed the slices with olive oil and toasted them in a very hot oven, flipping once. Meanwhile, I thin-sliced the zucchini, sweet onion, and green onion from the CSA box on my bargain mandolin, chopped some garlic, and sautéed the whole mess with some olive oil, crushed chiles, and black pepper, finishing it with fresh CSA thyme (herbs are here!). I topped the crunchy polenta with pecorino, dished up the zucchini and some red pepper-eggplant tapenade from Trader Joe's.

Meanwhile, I whipped up some tasty yellow squash salad for pot luck lunch! Again thin sliced, with green onions, chopped garlic, fresh thyme, olive oil, wine vinegar, fresh ground pepper, and salt. Dressed it and popped it in the oven to get some wilting going, then refrigerate and marinate until tomorrow!

Also feeling very inspired by Dad's swiss chard frittata - maybe tomorrow!