Yellow squash, cut into chunks, dipped in a blend of buttermilk and hot sauce and dredged in seasoned flour, sprayed with oil and air fried.

Air Fryer Squash Nuggets

I love summer squash and it can be prepared all kinds of ways - in a salad, stuffed, in a gratin, stir fried, smothered with onions, creamed, in a dressing, in a casserole and on the grill, among others.

And, I absolutely love deep fried squash y'all.

I mean deep fried foods are just so darned tasty - especially that good ole southern fried chicken!

A skillet meal of yellow squash and zucchini, corn, onion and tomatoes with garlic, that can be used as a side dish or served stuffed into warmed corn tortillas for a vegetable taco.

Skillet Squash and Zucchini with Corn - Calabacitas con Elote

I think it may have been when I shared the recipe for my Southern-Style Skillet Ratatouille on the Facebook page recently when a reader, Austin, mentioned calabacitas, a Southwest/Mexican-style dish that also uses some of the summer bounty of fresh vegetables that many of us love.

Summer is coming to an end soon so let's get them in while we can y'all!

A quick and easy skillet meal made with ground beef, fresh tomatoes, rice and summer squash and finished with shredded cheese.

Ground Beef and Squash Skillet

Y'all probably already know that I am into skillet meals. They're quicker than their more involved counterparts - like my skillet jambalaya, gumbolaya, skillet lasagna or ziti, and great for busy weeknights.

Like a lot of you, I also love summer squash, but mostly it gets pushed into being either a snack or a side, rather than a featured dish. This version makes it more main dish with the addition of ground beef and rice, though it's really a very versatile dish. Well drained canned or thawed frozen mixed vegetables or corn may also be added to expand it even further.

Sliced squash and chopped onions, caramelized in a skillet with bacon drippings and finished simply with salt, pepper and a pat of butter.

Skillet Squash

You don't really have to wait for summer to prepare summer squash because it's pretty much available year round these days. Still, it's one of my favorite, abundant and inexpensive, summer veggies, whether it's in a casserole, a dressing, in a gratin, or creamed. Heck, I even slice it up and snack on it raw!

Thickly cut slices of summer squash, tossed with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and a mixture of dried herbs, then grilled.

Grilled Squash with Herbs

I hesitated to share this "recipe" at first but then I thought hey, the first time I ever wanted to grill squash, I had to look up "how to grill squash" because I wanted to do it right, so hopefully it will be helpful. There is always somebody, somewhere just learning to cook.

Besides y'all. Doesn't that just look scrumptious? It's really quite simple, but along the way I've discovered a couple of helpful tips.

A simple and easy side dish casserole made with diced yellow squash, bacon, small shrimp and corn.

Squash Casserole with Shrimp and Corn

Yeah, yeah, I know... everybody is all about pumpkins, soups, stews and fall dishes right now, but I'm still working on end of summer amid these nearly 100 degree days we're still having along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. That hasn't stopped me from making fall favorites like chicken and dumplings, shortcut shrimp etouffee and Cajun-style chicken and andouille gumbo, because I've fixed all of those the last couple of weeks!

This recipe involves the use of yellow straightneck or crookneck squash, a veggie once relegated strictly to the summer months, but now available slap dab in the middle of winter these days. I admit, it's nice but I can't quite get used to that, although you still can't beat the flavor of one that's plucked right out of your backyard.

A cornbread dressing made with yellow squash, sauteed with onion, celery and bell pepper.

Cornbread Squash Dressing

I hear from a reliable source that squash is starting to come in! I didn't plant any this year so if you're trying to get rid of some, stop on by with a bag and I'll gladly take some off your hands!

For some reason, I never see pattypan squash around here, not even at the farmer's market, but yellow squash happens to be my favorite in the summer squash family. I like it far better than zucchini, though I do eat both. I think yellow is a little sweeter and more mellow than zucchini but both make pretty good zoodles.

A fresh tomato pasta sauce, made with garden vegetables - peppers, squash, zucchini, corn, eggplant, okra, beans - whatever you have! For a protein boost, add leftover roasted chicken, seasoned and sauteed shrimp, cooked ground beef, sausage, or other meats.

Garden Fresh Vegetable Spaghetti

I have been up to my ears in garden fresh tomatoes the past few weeks... not that it's a bad thing, don't get me wrong! It's just that as fast as I process some into sauce, I'm plucking a near equal amount off of the plants.

The last picking right before the tropical storm and steady coming!

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille - a simple stew of diced vegetables, made with bacon drippings, the Trinity of Southern Cooking, zucchini and summer squash, tomato, eggplant, okra and fresh herbs.

Southern Style Skillet Ratatouille

Most folks these days seem to associate ratatouille with the Disney movie of the same name, and many may only know it from that. It actually is a real Mediterranean dish, most closely associated with France and said to have originated in Nice. The word perhaps comes from "touiller" and translates to mean something akin to "toss or stir."

Traditionally ratatouille is simply zucchini and tomatoes, with peppers, garlic and onion, sometimes sliced, sometimes cut into chunks. Somewhere along the way, eggplant was included, and though it wasn't always a part of the traditional dish, it's pretty much expected these days. I decided to make it with a dice of a variety of summer vegetables that we love in the south.

A vegetable skillet meal, made from fresh summer squash, sweet Vidalia onion, with fresh okra and tomato.

Summer Veggie Skillet - Squash and Okra with Onion and Tomato

This is one of my favorite summertime skillet vegetable dishes - just simply squash and sweet onions, sauteed in a little bit of bacon drippings and butter, and stewed down with sliced okra, fresh tomatoes and finished with some garden parsley and basil. Quick and easy to make, I can make a meal of this entire pan on these hot summer days!

A skillet meal made from the best of summer veggies - squash, zucchini, bell pepper, green beans, Vidalia onions and tomatoes, with red potatoes and fresh garden herbs and the addition of some pan-seared fresh wild-caught Gulf shrimp.

Garden Vegetable Skillet with Shrimp

I get strange cravings, and most times, they're not at all what you'd expect in the way of a craving.

I get very strong cravings out of the blue for beef. For McDonald's french fries. Or their iced coffee. Homemade chicken noodle soup and creamy Chicken and Noodles. Egg drop soup from the local Chinese restaurant. And vegetables, in general. It was that way in my pregnancy - I didn't crave sweets, or odd combinations. I craved a meat and three dinner!

Young, tender, yellow summer squash, prepared simple and basic. Sweet Vidalia onion and bell pepper is first sauteed in bacon drippings and butter, the squash is added, and slowly smothered down.

Smothered Summer Squash and Onions

Yellow squash is plentiful in our Southern summers and this is pretty much my top favorite way to enjoy it. It's the same basic way many of our other favorite squash recipes begin anyway, from creamed squash to squash dressing and casseroles, though it sure stands pretty well all on its own too.

A marinated squash salad using summer vegetables, including squash, zucchini, vidalia onion, sweet bell pepper and jalapenos and dressed in a horseradish infused, sweet and sour "Fire and Ice" vinaigrette.

Fire 'n Ice Marinated Squash Salad

I have mentioned many times here, that like most other Southerners, I am a huge fan of the flavor of sweet and sour, most especially when it comes to salads. To that, however, I also like a little heat added too, so from pickles, to coleslaw, to one of my favorite cucumber and tomato salads, I love the "Fire 'n Ice" versions that bring in a bit of fire.

Marinated squash salads are popular here in the summer, so I thought why not bring those fire and ice elements in there too?

Fresh squash and tomatoes are paired with Vidalia onion and sweet bell peppers, topped with cheese and buttered bread crumbs and baked.

Squash Creole

Vidalia onions, okra, vine ripe tomatoes and green beans, freshly shucked corn, butter beans, southern peas and sweet bell peppers, yellow crookneck squash, zucchini and garden fresh cucumbers. I just love the veggies of summer. Have you gotten your fill yet?

Summer squash - zucchini, crookneck or a mixture of the two will work - is briefly stewed in onion, garlic and cream, mixed with leftover cooked rice, topped with a Parmesan breadcrumb and baked to a crispy golden brown delicious.

Summer Squash and Rice Gratin

As I watched The veggie hating Cajun shovel this in with our meal, y'all know I had to grin, but he caught me peeking at him! "I know," he says, "what is it?" "It's food," I say, grinning. "Just eat it."  He did! Every, single, speck of it. That says a lot y'all, coming from a non-veggie eating man.

This was a delicious side dish that I adapted from Real Cajun, a cookbook that you may recall I recently reviewed. The photography in this cookbook is simply incredible, so much so that as the book lay by my chair on the floor, my youngest cat was convinced that the crab claw poking out of the gumbo on the cover was a real crab. I wish you could have seen him inching and backing off from the book, and finally reaching out and carefully patting at it multiple times with his paw, only then convinced it was just a photo!  If you're a cat owner, this behavior makes complete sense to you.

Summer squash, stuffed with bell pepper, onion, tomatoes and pepper jack cheese, and topped with a sprinkle of panko bread crumbs.

Cheesy Stuffed Summer Squash

This is another great recipe to use those prolific summer squash, garden fresh tomatoes and even some of those bell peppers too. I just had to show the image below, which shows the pre-breaded squash because the stuffing is just so fresh looking.

Summer squash is mixed with the Trinity of vegetables, cream soup, eggs and fresh bread, for a squash dressing.

Summer Squash Dressing

Here's another recipe you might want to consider for your squash bounty! It's really a basic run of the mill squash dressing that we all pretty much have, this one using toasted bread crumbs. I decided to add in a bit of Trinity and some Cajun seasoning, just to bump up the flavor a bit.

Summer squash, sliced or cut into sticks or chunks, are tossed in buttermilk, then dredged into a lightly seasoned flour mixture, and quickly deep fried to crunchy goodness.

Fried Squash

Okay, yeah, I know... fried squash ain't exactly the healthiest way to eat summer squash, but I've been pretty lucky so far with my squash plants {crosses fingers} and so, I'm trying to get a few different recipes up for summer squash. Maybe you shouldn't eat these every day, but I have to say, they sure are good enough to want to!

Classic squash casserole made with summer squash, seasoned with bacon and onion, and tossed with cheese, eggs, mayonnaise and seasonings, baked with a cracker topping.

Summer Squash Casserole with Bacon

 This Squash Casserole recipe is probably my hands-down favorite way of eating all that great summer squash that grows like a weed in the garden. Growing up, I remember my aunt always having a vegetable garden - a pretty good sized one at that - and plenty of squash!

Most times when I have ever planted squash it has always seems to come under attack of squash bugs and borers and I end up with dead plants and no squash... grrrrrr. This year the squash has been producing! Ah, the joys of the veggie garden! Ya just never know what's gonna happen I guess.