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I think that other pregnant women's parenting anxiety dreams involve human babies.
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Shrimp and asparagus pasta.

(cross-posted from off_recipe)

I didn't want to go to the store last night. I had some pasta, I had some miscellaneous vegetables, and I had just over a pound of shrimp in the freezer. So:

I thawed and peeled the shrimp. 31-40s, a nice medium size.

I chopped up four cloves of garlic and three sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil.

I had a bunch of thick autumn asparagus. I cut off the top three or four inches and discarded the rest. I had a handful of snow peas, from which I removed the strings. I had half a large red bell pepper, which I minced.

I started water boiling for pasta and put a generous amount of olive oil in the bottom of my wok. (I'm not great with amounts, but probably half a cup.) I added the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes and cooked them over medium-high heat until the garlic was a nice golden color. I seasoned the now-flavored oil with some crushed red pepper, black pepper, and salt. Then I added the asparagus and watched it turn deep green and velvety-looking. When the asparagus was just beginning to give when pierced by a fork, I put some thin linguine in the pasta pot and added the red pepper and the shrimp to the wok, followed by the peas a moment later. I added some more oil, because I was worried that it might be too dry to coat the pasta, and continued to saute over medium-high heat just until all the shrimp was pink and the asparagus was tender to the fork. At the last minute, I stirred in about half a cup of the pasta cooking water to add liquid to the sauce.

How it turned out: Yum. The asparagus (which, as I said, was pretty chunky) was just tender, still vivid in color and full of body. I actually think it might've worked better for this recipe than pencil-thin asparagus; it held its texture well and made the dish a little more substantial. The snow peas were crisp, adding a nice bit of crunch. The shrimp had picked up the flavored oil beautifully.

What I'd do differently next time: It probably could've used more garlic. But overall, I was very pleased - and so were wcg and curiousangel, if the speed with which they cleaned their plates was any indication.