Diet Friendly Fast Food

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this Easy Roasted Tomatoes and Shrimp with Feta, Oregano, and Fennel is a perfect summer-into-fall dinner idea.)

The recipes I find myself making over and over again are the ones with super-easy preparation methods but plenty of complex flavors, and this recipe for Roasted Tomatoes and Shrimp with Feta, Oregano, and Fennel definitely falls into that category.  I admit, it was the lovely garden tomatoes that I have in abundance right now that pushed me into making this, but because roasting intensifies the flavor of the tomatoes, I think you could make this with good quality store-bought tomatoes as well. 

I loved everything about this easy salad with green beans, tomatoes, and Feta!

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and this amazing Green Bean, Tomato, and Feta Salad Oreganato is something I would happily eat over and over all summer long.  If you have green beans in your garden, please make this salad right away before the beans are gone!)

Yes, I know there have been a lot of salads and garden vegetables around here lately, but when I made this salad with green beans, tomatoes, feta cheese, and a vinegary-lemony-oregano dressing, I loved it so much that I thought I should share the recipe while people still had garden green beans. I actually found this recipe in a Woman's World Magazine when I sat waiting for an appointment, and I got the receptionist to photocopy the page for me! I added the the Feta, which I thought was a perfect flavor with this salad, but what really makes this is the tangy dressing that has both red wine vinegar and fresh lemon juice. If you have garden beans or good fresh beans from the store, please make this salad!

(Updated with better photos and step-by-step instructions, August 2014)  One of the wonderful things about having summer squash in your vegetable garden is that soon you'll have so much of it you feel perfectly justified in picking them when they're tiny, similar to the baby squash you get in the fanciest of restaurants. I first posted this wonderful recipe for Easy Roasted Baby Summer Squash with Feta and Thyme back on 2007 when I had an abundance of baby squash from my garden, but now that I don't have a garden at the new house (yet!) I buy the packages of baby squash from Costco to make this. If you don't have a garden or a Costco membership you can still make this recipe with larger squash that are cut in strips.  Roasting the squash with fresh thyme concentrates the flavor in vegetables in the most lovely way, but dried thyme will also work fine for this recipe.

I re-did the photos for this recipe with my niece Kara and her adorable four-year-old daughter Quinn.  It had been a long cooking day and Quinn was getting tired of entertaining herself, so I grabbed a kid-safe knife and enlisted her to help cut the baby squash in half.  Quinn has pretty strong food preference, as most kids do at that age, and the whole time we were cutting them up she kept saying "I hate zucchini."  But when the finished dish was ready, she surprisingly agreed to take a bite, and even more surprisingly, she liked it and ate a couple of pieces.  So if you have kids who won't eat their vegetables, maybe getting them to help cook will help!

Shrimp Salad is a family tradition with the Dennys, and my Shrimp and Macaroni Salad is something I used to make regularly for my dad, as well as making it for family parties for many years.  There are also other good shrimp salads on the blog, but I wouldn't dare substitute any of them for Shrimp and Macaroni Salad at a family gathering.  Until now.  This Lemony Shrimp Salad with Avocado, Heart of Palm, and Feta was so satisfying that I think most of my family would happily devour it.  (There are a couple of people in the family who hate avocados, go figure.)  The day I tested this recipe with Jake, we tried it out on a friend who stopped by, and she gave it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.  I'm sure I'll never stop making Shrimp and Macaroni Salad for my family, but when I want a phase one treat with shrimp, this is the salad I'll be making.