Paella: cookin' up the summer bounty

I'm a so-so chef at home, but I've prepared just enough successful meals to make me easily try new recipes. And when the CSA bin overfloweth with tomatoes and squash and peppers, well it's hard to cook a bad meal. It's like, every evening I look to see what veggies we have and what meat I might have purchased and how I can combine them to please everyone around the table. Bonus points for quick and easy. My go-to recipe site is Epicurious. If I want to make something with sausage and tomatoes, that's exactly the keywords I'll use in my search. Lately I've been hooked on one-dish meals and have fallen under the spell of paella.

Paella is a traditional Spanish dish that includes saffron rice and seafood. (It's pronounced pie-YAY-yuh.) My paella usually includes neither (and I'm pretty sure my kids wouldn't touch yellow rice), but I love this technique of cooking up meat and veggies and rice all together in one pot. Like this recipe for Italian Sausage and Bell Pepper Paella. Delish and so frickin easy. (That's the photo. Looks like I added shrimp and subbed out some peppers.) Or this one, which does most of the cooking on the stove top rather than the oven, for Spicy Turkey Paella. I used ground turkey instead and had no saffron, but had the rest of the ingredients. So easy and so good and I got to use lots of market produce. You could use this technique to cook any number of meat and/or veggie combinations -- whatever you have on hand.

I foresee a winter of one-dish meals: stews, different types of lasagne, casseroles, using the veggies that I've been freezing up for the rainy season. Mmm, comfort food.