Kitchen sink pasta

This past weekend I finally got to see my brother play hockey at his home rink at the Academy, in Colorado Springs. Unluckily, our flight got delayed by four hours coming home. I really needed to go grocery shopping, so by the time I was headed for home, I was hungry and unwilling to cook. Sadly for me, it was about 9 p.m. on a Sunday. Nothing was open (which we learned the hard way... driving from place to place).

So, a quick peek at the pantry staples turned up a few things I was pleasantly surprised to find and threw together to make the following dinner.

When I saw my pasta (I found this in a bag in the back of my cupboard.... my pasta supply dangerously low), I felt like I was living out Adam Robert's recent "Weary Traveler's Spaghetti" post. I dressed the pasta with a little oil and some chili flakes.

With the water from the pasta, I blanched a couple handfuls of spinach:

And defrosted a some frozen shrimp from Trader Joe's:

I also found a half jar of pasta sauce in my fridge. The shrimp and sauce were lucky finds. I probably would have used diced tomatoes out of a can otherwise.

All of that, paired with some leftover Italian pesto bread I found in the freezer made for a perfect late night dinner after a long, and fairly crappy, day.

So, no... this didn't turn out to be an "everything but the kitchen sink" dinner. It's actually something I would probably make again. I tried to throw chop up some zucchini to toss in, but after a long weekend and then some, it was feeling a little squishy and funky. Fresh vegetables are NOT a pantry staple when you haven't grocery shopped in a couple weeks.