Cajun Alfredo with Shrimp

Shrimp, cream, and pasta. What's not to like. Well the kids said the shrimp. They boycotted it out right. And you know this might just be very nice prepared without the shrimp. But to get it right we did the whole thing, another recipe from Lisa Leake and her blog turned cookbook 100 Days of Real Food. Sure enough at least a few of us loved it. It was fun to make.

First we cranked up the heat under a big pot of water to prepare 1 pound of fettuccine pasta.

Then we diced up 1 half of a big red onion and 1 red bell pepper.

We heated up a pan and melted the onion for a few minutes in 3 chunks of butter. Whaaat?? Yup. A whole bunch of butter, YUM! We call that real and therefore healthy. BAM!

Next we cleaned up 1 pound of shrimp. We had bought it deveined but not peeled. As a compromise between trouble and cost. We got the shells off fairly quickly.

When the pasta was tossed into the salt water and the onion looked good and the aroma was to die for, we added the pepper, shrimp, and

our own version of Cajun spices: garlic salt, celery salt, dried oregano, chili powder, pink salt (how cool is that?), dried thyme, and red pepper. All to taste. Well; and some extra pink salt, since Lena, Lily, and Lucy each had to have a turn. (And as such we real-fooded it up a notch from the original recipe. Mmmmh-huh.)

Then Lily cleaned 3 handfuls of spinach.

We chopped up the spinach as well as 2 cloves of garlic.

They were added to the mix after the shrimp had cooked for five minutes and looked ready.

After a minute or so we added 1 cup of cream and 3 (Lily-) handfuls of freshly shredded Parmesan cheese. We brought it to a simmer and thickened the sauce up for a few minutes.

There it is. Yummy! It looked like the pros had a go at it. 

Thanks again Lisa for a wonderful dish. I hope we did your recipe and love for good healthy food justice. We sure enjoyed this one.