Shrimp and Basil Pasta

I sit here tonight as Jessi is making me suffer through the movie Forks over Knives. I say suffer because I hate to see all the negative information about the foods that I truly love so, so much. If you're not familiar, it's a movie promoting a whole food, plant-based diet to prevent things like cancer and cardiovascular disease. I must say that it is pretty interesting, enlightening and the correlations are pretty damning for having animal-based foods in your diet. As I write this post, I can see the meat in my diet getting smaller. Not going to cut out all animal-based foods all-together, but I definitely think we should reign it back a lot and increase our plant-based food intake. If you've seen the movie let us know what you think and how and if your diet has changed. We'll see what happens because I, Michael, have always been a bonafide animal-product eater.

No real good way to segue into this recipe, but at least it's not a prime rib right? Everyone loves a good seafood pasta. The shrimp and pasta combo in this recipe was delicious. The spinach we served it upon was slightly strange, however (the original recipe said to just serve the pasta over raw spinach). If you make this, I would recommend cooking the spinach with the onions, etc as stated below. Definitely give it a try! Serves 4-ish. Roughly modified from Cooking Light.

Ingredients

• 3 quarts water
• 8 ounces uncooked spaghetti
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 pound peeled and deveined large shrimp
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup onion, chopped
• 5-6 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 3 tablespoons drained capers
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups baby spinach
• Grated parmesan-regganio cheese, to top

Directions

1. Bring 3 quarts water to a boil in a Dutch oven. Add pasta; cook 8-11 minutes (according to directions on box). Drain when done and place in a large bowl.
2. Meanwhile, heat butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add shrimp to pan; cook 3 minutes or until shrimp is pink, turning once. Take shrimp out of pan and keep warm.
3. Add olive oil to pan. Add onion and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, basil, capers, lemon juice, salt and spinach and cook until spinach is wilted (*original recipe calls for adding pasta on top of raw spinach - we suggest cooking it in with the onions, etc.). 
4. Top pasta with spinach and onion mixture. Sprinkle cheese on top. Enjoy!