Down in New Orleans

OMG.

Cajun pasta night!

So so so so so so so good. And I made it up all by myself! No recipe at all!

I guess I've watched enough Top Chef to be able to put together a simple meal.

How to make my Cajun Pasta:

1. Boiled my pasta until al dente.

2. Cooked six andouille sausage links in a sauce pan for about 10 minutes until they were plump.

3. Sauteed 1/2 pound of white shrimp in olive oil (or EVOO, like my girl Racheal Ray says) and dusted it with Tony Cachere's Creole seasoning. (If you don't know what that is, it's amazing stuff that tastes good on everything: seafood, meat, french fries...it's the ultimate salty creole seasoning.)

4. Dumped a jar of Newman's Own Roasted Red Pepper Alfredo sauce in a sauce pan on low so that it warmed through. (Hey, I didn't go to culinary school. I don't make sauce.)

5. Sliced up 3 of the sausage links (saved the other 3 for Charlotte) and dumped the sausage and the shrimp in the alfredo sauce and mixed it all together.

6. Poured the sauce over the pasta.

DELICIOUS.

It was so quick and easy. Made enough for 2, so Ben will have plenty for dinner tomorrow night! The roasted red pepper sauce was a great touch, too. Thank heavens for Paul Newman. Not only was he gorgeous, he started a company that uses whole ingredients and a portion of every sale goes to charity!

Now, this was not too terribly spicy. Ben and I don't like too terribly spicy foods. I'm sure this recipe could be tweaked to add a little more spice. I thought it was just spicy enough.

But it did take me back here...

New Orleans. One of my favorite places in the world.

Ben and I were able to take a few days to visit New Orleans back in June. I had never been able to go there before. It is an awesome city full of culture and flavor (and drunks). We had so much fun wandering the streets and ducking into small shops. And then the food...

I'm going to die just thinking about it.

Random fun fact: Did you know that in the famous landscape shots of Tara in Gone With The Wind, the front door is actually off center? Tara is always shown at an angle, and the director thought it looked funny with the door in the traditional place, so he had it moved right of center to be seen between columns. If you saw it straight on, the door would be behind columns.

And the movie is NOTHING like the book. If you haven't read it, I highly suggest it. Brilliant.