Fun Monday - A blog by any other name...

Fun Monday this week is being hosted over at Mariposa's Tales. It is a two parter this time around:

(1) Please share to us how the NAME of your BLOG was made? I can't wait to hear interesting funny stories!

(2) Please share to us (in words or photo, though a combination of both will be a bonus!) your favorite/ most common dish!

I'll start with the name of my blog, but I'm afraid I don't have a clever or funny story to share about it. Let's see...Karina is my name (well, okay, my middle name, but I've always wanted to use it so I love that I get to in the blogosphere). I've always been a fan of alliteration, so when creating my blog, I looked for a word that would sound good along side Karina and would describe what I meant to do with the blog. Candid fit perfectly. In keeping with my love for alliteration, when I began a second blog, for my creative writing, Creative Karina made sense. And recently, when I had a story too juicy to spill in these pages and needed password protection, Covert Karina was born (but is now on hiatus since the need for covertness has been extinguished for now). I also have an idea for yet another blog (Frances, you're rubbing off on me), so I'm looking for another name that will be fitting...stay tuned.

Onto part 2. I'm forced to bend the rules a bit here, because A) I could never pick a favorite dish, I have so many, and B) I didn't have time to make any of those in the last week. I did, however, try out a new recipe on Friday night, so figured I'd give you that instead. I got this recipe off a magazine I just bought, but can't remember the name of it right now...I'll add that later. You should be able to click on the photo to embiggen (I hope):

Of course, being me, I always have to edit and add to recipes, so I made some changes. First of all, to the shrimp I added scallops:

I couldn't find the creamed spinach it refers to (and believe me, I searched high and low), so instead I went with this:
I chose to use whole wheat pasta, and since I'm lazy, pre-minced garlic:

So, at one point, I had three burners going at once...that's the spinach in the back, the pasta on the right, shrimp and scallops on the left:

Possibly because the spinach was the wrong type, following this recipe exactly let to a pretty bland tasting meal. I don't do bland, so I added some salt, a bit of hot sauce, and since I was still pretty bored with it, at the very end I added a couple of tablespoons of a light alfredo sauce I had kicking around. That worked. This is what I came out with:


DELICIOUS!

Stop by Mariposa's for the rest of the Fun Mondayers, and be sure to visit...you know what, I don't know who's hosting next week yet...can someone let me know?

Enjoy!