Good Eats - Seafood Clomp

Gene and I recently ended a little challenge. Actually, it was my idea and he kinda got dragged into it. You see, with him being off work for 8 weeks, there was a loss of income. I really wanted to challenge myself to see if I could come up with that lost income in other ways.

We've sold a few things on eBay, gotten a rebate, a tax return, etc. All the while, I'm doing calculations in my head. No worries, we're not destitute or anything, I just thought it would be nice to not "worry" about any savings diminishing. Plus it was a fun challenge.

The biggest thing I decided at the beginning of July, was to see if we could go the ENTIRE month of July without buying groceries.

Why yes, I AM serious, why do you ask?

I knew it was possible. We had just bought an Angel Food Ministries package, and because of my husband and his love for anything meat, my freezer was pretty full. Plus, weeks before, I had bought about 50 cans of canned goods on a really good sale.

The potential was high that we might be eating freezer burnt chicken wings left from the wedding (2 years ago) but I wanted to give it a shot.

Gene agreed, but only with a few rules. We could restock these items:

1. Cereal (we eat about 2-3 boxes A WEEK. We like cereal)
2. Milk (read the cereal part)
3. Seed bread direct from the bakery - they only make 1-2 loaves per day.
4. chips - Gene has a serious chip fetish. I don't know how he doesn't way 900 pounds. Jerk.

He played along, and only a couple times did we cave when we were tired of fish sticks and green beans.

So to celebrate today, we went to the grocery store and shopped like pot smoking 17 year olds. In fact, I got the "eyeball" on my cart at least 3 times. There were chips (duh), 2 packages of cookies, some bagels and something we've been wanting to try... a big package of mixed seafood.

Yeah, really.

A few years ago, I would have said "RALPH" and moved on, but I've been adventurous lately and want to try new recipes I made up myself.

So, I give you our creation. Not sure what the name is, so how about "Seafood Creation"
{I'm creative like that.}

Cook 1/2 pound Penne Past - al dente.

In a seperate skillet, add about 2 tablespoons virgin olive oil and a pound of seafood medley - we found ours on a shelf in the *very small* seafood section of Walmart. It has squid, octopus, crab and shrimp. Ours was pre-cooked, so I'm just heating it.

I added around 1/2 pound of broccoli, but you could do any other vegetable you liked. Ours was from frozen. I covered it and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. I also added about a teaspoon of garlic powder at this point, but I think for the next time, I would use around 2 teaspoons. {I really like garlic! - said with a hissing, stinky, garlicy voice}


Now for my super secret ingredient:
{shhhhhh}

{LOL, this feels like a product shot for some reason}

Saturday I made a white pizza and used half a jar of Ragu alfredo for the sauce on the pizza (very good btw), I used the rest of the jar for this recipe. Actually 1/2 jar was really good, not too much sauce and covered everything well.

Stir in the pasta and mix/heat well.

I served it with seed bread (because that's what we do around here) and it was very yummy. I actually quite liked it, it wasn't "too" fishy tasting (I'm not a big seafood fan really). Gene didn't think it was seafood-ish enough.

But he's a killjoy so whatever on him.

... and since you were wondering... mmmmm Octopus!