Oven Fried Zucchini and Lemon Caper Dipping Sauce

My bestie and I agreed that we love happy food.

What do we consider happy food?

Food that is exciting, adventurous, not the standard. Food that has different flavor combinations. Food that big on flavor. Food that could be served in a restaurant, but we made it ourselves. That's happy food.

And so my bestie came over a few nights ago, and we cooked together and made happy food. And we didn't even set off the smoke alarm or anything.

Check out our menu:

• Cornmeal Crusted Chicken Tenders with Blackberry Mustard - I made life easy and bought chicken tenders because they were cheaper than buying the breast and slicing myself.
  
• Broccoli Bacon Slaw - I found a bag of broccoli slaw mix that was exactly 4 cups. No chopping broccoli florets for me! Easy peasy. 
  
• Oven Fried Zucchini with Lemon Caper Dipping Sauce - I used "Parm in a can" instead of grating my own Paremsan. Sure made life easy and tasted good too.
  
• Grilled Pineapple with Mango Sorbet and a blackberry drizzle - I bought a whole pineapple and trimmed/sliced it myself. Doing that saved me $1.75!

Follow the links above for the recipes to the chicken tenders and broccoli bacon slaw. The oven fried zucchini and grilled pineapple was my idea so you're stuck looking at the recipes here. I'll post the grilled pineapple recipe later this week.

Today, it's all about the oven fried zucchini, which I can't seem to get enough of. I made them again for myself last night.

I may or may not be stalking the zucchini plant in my garden to see if there is a zucchini on there yet that I can use to make these again. For free. Because free food you've grown yourself tastes better.

I LOVE these things. I love the salty, nutty Parmesan. I love the lemon and caper combination. If you don't have capers, go buy a jar. And then make chicken piccata with the rest. You'll be happy you did. But if you're going by what you have in the house, how about some jarred pizza or spaghetti sauce, heated? Everyone has jarred pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce in their house...right?

::sheepishly raises hand in the air and looks around to make sure she's not alone::

But these oven fried zucchini sticks? These made the bestie and I very happy.

Here's a little instructional video I put together on how to make them. Love to know if you try them and like them as much as we do!