Zucchini

This salad is great for picnics. It has all the components of a family favorite: beautiful color, satisfying crunch, and a delicious dressing. The recipe is adapted from one developed by freelance recipe tester Penelope Hoblyn, who often makes the salad for large gatherings.

This riff on traditional pasta salad gets an added layer of flavor from golden pearls of toasted couscous.

Toss aside the mashed potatoes and welcome this appealing alternative, a spirited mix of zucchini, tender sautéed bell pepper, and refreshing scallions.

The health benefits: nearly a fifth of the RDA for vitamin C in 1/2 cup raw cabbage; magnesium from the zucchini; eggplant offers fiber.

This spicy stew is no garden-variety meal. Healthy eating is easy when Mother Nature cranks out plenty of nutrient-packed produce. Chef Shawn McClain of Chicago's Spring restaurant created a vegetarian dish using a variety of veggies in a tagine, a flavorful Moroccan stew. We can't think of a tastier way to help get your five-a-day.

Lasagna is comfort food — a real PMS soother. But it's also loaded with symptom-fighting calcium.

Chef: Patrick O'Connell, The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Virginia. Claim to fame: Named best chef in the Mid-Atlantic region by the James Beard Foundation. How he defines natural: "Natural means meat and poultry raised without antibiotics and hormones, and locally grown vegetables."

You'll crave it because it's pizza; you'll love it because it's so good for you. Bake this pie directly on an oven rack for a nice, crisp crust.

Cuddle up with comfort food that's — gasp! — healthy.
Soothe your carb-craving soul without the guilt. This chicken pot pie delivers comfort at a fraction of the salt and fat of the traditional variety.

Veggie perfection This nutrient-stuffed dish won't leave you hungry. What do you get when you give bell peppers center stage on your plate? A veggie-heavy meal that even a meat fiend will find too tempting to resist. Here we stuff antioxidant-rich bell peppers with couscous (a tiny, round pasta) and hardworking nutrient powerhouses like zucchini and yellow squash. The result? A meal low in fat, high in fiber, and loaded with vitamins A and C.

Everything about this dish is light, clean, vibrant, and harmonious, with the wonderful taste of corn perhaps taking center stage. The corn's refined sweetness is marvelously juxtaposed with the elegant sour flavor in the cheese. Mushrooms provide an earthiness, and spinach leaves cut through all the elements to insure a clean, bright taste. A playful salad featuring buttery lettuces, tomato pieces, and Rawmesan adds even greater depth on the palate. Here, both the flavor and textural variety are extraordinary.

Slow-cooking these colorful vegetables renders them soft and silky. And serving them Mediterranean-style — at room temperature — makes entertaining easy, because you don't have to run back and forth between the table and the kitchen.

Kebabs are not only fun to eat, they also save time: It takes less than 10 minutes for these lamb cubes to cook up medium-rare. The marinade, made with fresh thyme and rosemary, infuses both the meat and the vegetables with south-of-France flavor.

Though not quite as tender, lamb shoulder chops have deeper flavor than rib chops and won't break the bank.

Lightly frying the zucchini for this dish is the only step that takes a bit of time. And the result is wonderful; the thin slices, accented with garlic, mint, and lemon, meld perfectly with the pasta.

Ann Gillespie of Alexandria, Virginia, writes: "Because I'm balancing graduate school and a family, I try to cook things that don't take a lot of time. But I love experimenting with ingredients, so most of my recipes are easy to make and use interesting flavor combinations. This pasta dish is reminiscent of what my husband and I would cook when we were first married."

Made without stock, this light vegetable soup (which was passed down from Elena's mother) is not only easy to prepare but amazingly flavorful. It really benefits from the final addition of egg and parmesan.

With these distinctly Middle Eastern kebabs, the minty coolness of the yogurt sauce offsets the allspice, pepper, and cinnamon in some of the most succulent and juicy meatballs you have ever tasted.

A creamy white cheddar cheese sauce makes this gratin luxurious enough to serve as a vegetarian main course.