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.

Fish and Shrimp Tacos

We found ourselves guests at a North Carolina beach and cooking for our keep. So we ventured to a pier where we had spotted a few fishing trawlers and picked out a red fish and a pound and a half of shrimp fresh from the boat. We learned that they also called the red fish "red drum" around here and that they can only keep the ones 18 to 27 inches in length. Otherwise they go back into the sea.

Everybody pitched in to peel the shrimp. The red fish was already filleted and ready to go. Both were simply tossed into a pan with plenty of olive oil and a little salt and pepper. 

The taco shells were homemade by our aunt Cat (We'll have to do these some time and share. They were just perfect). We also cut up a whole bunch of stuff to serve: red onion, cucumber, lemons, green onions, red peppers, parsley, lettuce, tomatoes, grated cheese, and a whole bunch of other stuff we can't remember anymore.

The leftovers we fed to the pelicans. Not really.  But we still had to share the picture.