It's great to be here on DrGreene.com on the 15th anniversary of this terrific site! I hope you'll follow my posts this week to get tips for one of the key ways to save in the kitchen: cooking once and enjoying the results many times. When you start thinking about cooking like this, you'll find it's easy to cook healthy food for your family, even on a tight budget.

Cook once, enjoy many

When you cook once and use the results in different ways, you save time, energy, and water. For example, when you make vanilla pudding, serve some hot right away over fruit. The next day, serve the pudding chilled with fruit on top. You'll get variety without extra work: less cooking and less dishwashing. When you make pesto, make enough to use right away on pasta plus some to freeze for busy winter nights.

Tomorrow, we'll look at going local to capture summer's bounty.

Today, let's talk about how cook once and enjoy many times. Share your tips in the comments section below.

Grilled Summer Squash Two Ways

Summer squash is cheap, easy to grow, and good for you. But many recipes for yellow squash or zucchini are watery, bland, or have loads of butter or cheese. The trick to making squash a favorite summer vegetable? Grill it! The dry heat gets rid of the extra water and the smoky, grilled flavor makes squash downright interesting. Eat it hot one day and cool as a salad the next.

Active time: 5 minutes. Total time: 12 minutes. Makes 8 servings.

Ingredients

4 summer squash (yellow squash, zucchini, or a mix)
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Start grill. Rinse squash and cut off stem ends and any bad spots. Cut in half lengthwise.
2. Peel garlic and cut in half lengthwise, so you have four freshly cut sides. Rub garlic on cut side of squash. Save garlic for dressing. Drizzle squash with about 2 teaspoons of olive oil and rub to coat.
3. Put squash on grill skin side down. Cover and cook for 4 or 5 minutes, until skin shows grill marks and squash gives a little when you poke it with a fork.
4. Meanwhile, make the dressing by mincing garlic. In a small jar or glass, shake or whisk together minced garlic, lemon juice, remaining olive oil, and mustard. Taste and add salt and pepper as desired.
5. Turn squash over and grill for another 3 to 5 minutes, until grill marks show on cut side and you can easily push a fork into squash. Remove from grill, cut into bite-sized pieces.
6. Serve half the squash hot or at room temperature. Pour dressing over remaining squash and refrigerate, serving cold or at room temperature within two or three days.

Tips and notes

• Mix in chopped tomatoes or basil for another twist on the same recipe. Add cold, cooked black beans or chickpeas and you've got lunch.
• Top pizza with grilled summer squash.
• If you don't have a grill, cut squash into bite-sized pieces after rubbing it with garlic and before coating with oil. Bake at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes.

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