The Recipe: What a quick supper! Just cook the beef in the slow cooker (no browning!) with pantry ingredients, then toss together a quick sauté of vegetables and black beans. Add some diced avocado and sour cream. Gorgeous!The Conversation: The lesson I've learned from chefs about pantry ingredients. This recipe is so quick and easy
that I'm adding it to a special collection of easy summer recipes
published every summer since 2009.
Watch for new 'summer easy' recipes all summer long.
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As of this month, I’ve written 175 weekly columns for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrangling home-cook friendly recipes from restaurants. Column by column, the weeks fly by, the years too. And week after week, I fall in love with a brand-new place, its chef, its food and most especially its story.Every week, that one place is my new favorite. I want to eat there! I want everyone else to eat there too! The next week? It happen…

An oh-so-easy but seductive zucchini salad, made slightly sexy with the spiral zucchini noodles which are taking the world by storm as a low-carb, whole-food pasta-like but grain-free noodle.


Real Food, Fresh & Seasonal. Another Easy Summer Vegetable Salad. Budget Friendly. Low Carb. Weight Watchers Friendly. Naturally Gluten Free. Paleo. Not Just Vegan, Vegan Done Real. Did I Mention Irresistible?!

The Recipe: A pasta salad with summer's best fresh garden veggies, light on the pasta, generous with the veggies and all tossed in a g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s mint vinaigrette. Fresh and summery, perfect for light summer meals. Most adaptable! Real food. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real. Ohhhh people, I sure do hope there's fresh mint in your garden – – preferably in an herb pot since unfettered mint might-could one day envelop the world in fragrant spearmint leaves! – – because wow, who knew the beauty of a fresh-mint vinaigrette? Certainly not me until now: what a real revelation! The inspiring recipe comes from Pinterest, a recipe I pinned but never made. This was way back, but even now, that single recipe keeps getting re-pinned and re-pinned!Curious, I returned to the source, one of my favorite food blogs, Dana Treat – oh no, I hope all is well, as of this day she's not posted since December 2013 – to experience the real thing, in my own kitchen with my own tastebuds. Now my rec…