Pasta Carbonara

It took me quite a while to get back into cooking and baking once Robby was born.  We had a sweet friend in Amarillo who had everyone in her small group at church sign up to bring us meals for 2 whole weeks after Robby was born.  It was incredible.  I would cook things here and there, but nothing creative or exciting.  And every chance there was for Tim to take us out to eat, I let him!  Recently, the bug has bitten me and I've been in the kitchen more.  I think what started it was Tim telling everyone at the pharmacy that I baked and they started asking for things.  So I felt obligated to bake something for them at least once a week.  That forced me to get back in there and get going.  Yesterday, I was craving pasta all day.  In our house, we don't eat spaghetti.  Tim doesn't like it, but that's fine with me.  It's never been one of my favorites and I know I will be making it soon enough when the kids don't want to eat anything but plain spaghetti and sauce!  Anyway, I remembered that we made pasta carbonara a long time ago, in fact I think Tim actually made it for us because he found a recipe and wanted to do it himself.  I looked up a simple recipe and got going on it.  We always have spaghetti noodles, garlic, and parmesan cheese on hand.  Usually we have bacon, but this time we didn't.  So I ran to the store to get bacon (I needed to blackberries anyway for the cobbler I decided to make for dessert).  This recipe is simple, but was so good!  I changed it just a tad, so here is what I did:

Chicken Carbonara

Ingredients
-1 package spaghetti noodles
-1 pound bacon
-1 Tbsp garlic
-pepper
-4 eggs
-salt
-1 cup parmesan cheese (I prefer the refrigerated, shredded kind rather than the grated)

Directions
Get your noodles cooking according to the directions on the box.  Also, whisk eggs in a small bowl and season with salt.  While your noodles are boiling, cook your bacon in a pan on medium high until crispy.  Take out the bacon and let drain on a paper towel.  Reserve about 1/4 cup of the bacon grease, discard the rest.  Once the bacon as cooled, crumble or chop it and set aside.  Drain noodles, reserving about 1 cup of the pasta water.  Return the 1/4 cub bacon grease to the pan over medium/low heat.  Add garlic and a little black pepper and saute for about a minute.  Add the pasta and bacon, and toss.  Remove from the heat, add the eggs and toss well to coat.  You don't want scrambled eggs in your pasta, so make sure the eggs aren't cooking as you toss it.  Now, add the cheese and toss some more.

It's very simple and doesn't take much time.  You get pretty much all of it done and ready to go while the pasta is cooking.  Just make sure you have a good pair of tongs, it makes it much easier.  The ones I had weren't good for what I was trying to do so it made it a bit difficult to toss effectively!

I also made a super easy blackberry cobbler by the Pioneer Woman.  I definitely satisfied my cravings with our meal last night!