rotini with summer squash and peas

• 1 lb rotini
• 1 bag of frozen peas, thawed for 1/2 hour
• 3 summer squash, cut into bite sized pieces
• Olivio
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• Parmesan cheese
• fresh basil, chopped

Boil pasta in lightly salted water until just about fully cooked, maybe about 7-8 minutes. Scoop about 1-2 cups of the water (I recommend a pyrex measuring cup for the task) and set aside. Add squash and peas to pot and continue cooking over a high flame for about 2 minutes or until pasta is al dente. Drain mixture and return to the same pot, add 3 tablespoons of Olivio, lemon juice and enough of the reserved water to make a sauce that will cover all of the ingredients. Toss until Olivio is fully melted. Add basil and cheese and serve.

The dish: If you live in the beautiful Empire State, then you're going through this funky time where it's pretty hot out but constantly raining. I hate using the stove during the summer, but when it's wet out it's a necessary evil. This dish is great because it's a true one pot meal that only takes about 10 minutes to cook, so you can go from start to finish before your kitchen is even heated up. As always, try to use the pasta that's fortified with some good stuff like fiber and omega 3s, we like Barilla Plus or Hannaford has a similar house brand. You won't even taste the difference and you can feel good about eating a nice big plate of pasta.

corn with roasted poblano

• 1 bag frozen white and yellow corn
• 1 whole poblano pepper
• 1tsp Olivio (or butter, if you want to die)

Roast whole pepper in 300 degree oven for 20 minutes, remove. Once cooled, chop into little pieces. Cook corn according to package. Mix cooked corn, chopped pepper and Olivio together.

The dish: Growing up I didn't own one single baseball card. My childhood heroes were not men who threw balls and swung sticks, but rather men of social and business importance, specifically, Lee Iacocca. Against the advice of my fourth grade teacher I did my biography book report on his best selling autobiography and when he got canned from the Ellis Island project I wrote him to let him know at least one fifth grader was pissed off. Amazingly, he wrote back; it was the proudest moment of my young life. My love for Lido has not faded over time. I proudly own an old Chrysler and when it looked like there was going to be a "car czar", I was ready to go to Washington and lobby like hell for him. If you know anything of Mr. Iacocca, then you know of the immense love and profound sense of loss he holds for his first wife, Mary. Mary died nearly 30 years ago after a long struggle with diabetes, and to this day Lee is probably the strongest advocate on the globe for diabetes research, donating millions of dollars towards research and treatments. Olivio is a buttery spread made with olive oil that is much less destructive to your internals than either butter or margarine, and it tastes and spreads awesome. Developing and marketing the spread was just Lee's way of giving people a healthier, better tasting alternative, while furthering his philanthropy. I'm proud to say that my 10 year old self did a pretty good job at picking hero's.