Pasta Carbonara

"The time has come my little friends to talk of food and things" (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass). Today I have a tasty dish for you that I made only yesterday. I was in a bind because 6:00 p.m. came around and no one had yet made dinner. Not because we're slackers, you see, but actually more because my sister had been throwing up the day before and my mother, feeling the groaning and lurching and churnings of sympathy, had no inclination to eat. Therefore, I, noticing the time, took it upon myself to make something delicious that would only take a little while to prepare. Upon finding a half-consumed package of bacon in the meat drawer in the refrigerator and the leftover bits of ham (from Sunday dinner) in a tupperware on the second shelf, I suddenly sensed a delightful little blip on my revelatory radar: Pasta Carbonara.

Now, I had not made the dish for more than five years (not since I came back from Italy in 2006), so it was a little odd that out of nowhere I thought to make it. However, make it I did, ed fu veramente una meraviglia straordinaria come un sogno fantastico che ricevi senza dormire, cogli occhi aperti e la bocca spalancata. By the way, I just made that one up. Right off the cuff.

Anyway, here's the recipe:

Pasta Carbonara

Four slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1 cup of cooked ham
2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 medium-sized onion
4 eggs
3 Tbsp. milk
1 lb. linguine pasta
5 oz. parmesan or pecorino Romano, grated
Basil, salt, pepper, thyme, garlic to taste

Fry the bacon in a saucepan with the butter and onion. Boil the pasta according to the directions on the box. Whisk the eggs and milk together in a bowl. When the pasta is done, drain off the water, then quickly add the egg mixture to the pasta and stir. The heat from the pasta will cook the eggs in about a minute or so. Then add spices, bacon, ham, and cheese. Serves four people (Note: I found that out because Mom decided she was hungry after all, and Maren had had just about enough of crackers and 7UP). Buon appetito!