The best of late summer and early fall vegetables - eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and sweet bell pepper - tossed with an olive oil, vinegar and herb-based dressing, diced tomatoes, garlic, chunks of red onion and sliced smoked sausage, then baked.

Ratatouille and Sausage Bake

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love a vegetable dish like this. The Cajun?

Not so much.

So, when I cook something like this it's all for me!

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!

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.

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot. A mix of summer's best veggies like sweet onion, fresh corn, zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, green beans, sweet bell pepper and okra, a perfect dish for the veggie lovers!

Summer Vegetable Gumbo - Garden in a Pot

Let's have a last hurrah for summer y'all! We are finally at the end of it this Friday, well, at least according to the calendar. There won't be any fall-like temperatures showing up here in the Deep South for awhile yet even then. In fact, the past two days there has been a heat index advisory of 110 degrees. Hey, the good news is this dish can be served hot, warm or at room temperature!

I love vegetables, and this stew is loaded with the summer vegetables I love.

Other than just a general vegetable stew, I actually wasn't quite sure what I wanted to call this recipe when it was all said and done, but when I opened the stored container to heat up a serving the next day, and the aroma immediately spoke gumbo to me, so that's what I settled on. 

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!

Oven roasting intensifies the flavor of many vegetables, giving a browned and often crisped exterior, against a creamy, soft feel inside. It's one of my favorite ways to cook them, and they're a perfect addition to your table any time of the year.

Roasted Zucchini, Onions, Peppers and Tomatoes

It's mid-October and that means that we just finished up with "America's Largest Block Party" down here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If you have a classic car, or even if you just love them, but you've never been, I don't know why! Put it on your calendar and get on down here next year and check it out. It's quite an event, there are beautiful cars everywhere, and it always starts the first weekend in October every year, continuing on through the next Sunday.

The weather has been perfect for it too, as it usually is for this event. By October, things have usually cooled off a tad here in the Deep South finally - mid-80s during the day and low to mid-60s at night. There was one night there on the ball field with No. 1 Grandson that I was literally shivering in a t-shirt and jeans! Humidity has not been too bad either and frankly that's really the biggest factor around here because even when the temperature is up, if the humidity is down it's pleasant, and that it has been. Really gorgeous weather.

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!

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?

A nice tender quick bread, seasoned with cinnamon and studded with walnuts, made using some of that garden bounty of zucchini.

Zucchini Nut Bread

I suppose just about anybody that grows zucchini has a collection of recipes for their abundant bounty, including one for a sweet quick bread. On the other hand, those of us who are lucky enough to be the recipient of bags of that bounty, sometimes just don't know what all to do with them! This recipe is for the latter of us.

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, 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!