Recipe 1: Pasta Carbonara with Turkey Bacon

I love turkey bacon. Well, I love bacon, and turkey bacon is even easier to love, because it only has 35 calories in each slice.

Anyway, last night I made pasta carbonara with turkey bacon. I used the Paupered Chef recipe, but used my awesome turkey bacon. I also made a few other adjustments.

First, I fried the turkey bacon (2 slices, chopped) in about 1.5 tbsp of olive oil. Turkey bacon is not as oily as its pork-based counterpart, so I added extra oil to compensate for that. You should also add a bit of salt, because our friend turkey bacon is also less salty. While your bacon is frying (it needs to be crispy), cook 2 oz of spaghetti according to package directions.

(I suppose this is the part where I apologize for the awkward in-progress pictures. In my dreams, I aspire to be like Pioneer Woman in my picture taking. I have aways to go yet.)

Anyway, this is the part where you dump the pasta you've cooked in with the bacon (turkey or otherwise) and mix it around, then add an egg white (just put the yoke in a bowl and put the bowl in the fridge*) and 1/2 cup parmesan cheese to the mix. (Unless your me, and you are a) lactose intolerant and b) only have about 1/4 cup of cheese to add). Mix it around some more, till it's all combined. As the original recipe poster said, "it will look kind of gross."

Dump the whole mixture into a big-ish soup bowl, and plop the egg yolk you saved earlier on top. Add a bunch of black pepper.

It will still look a bit gross. Mix it all up, so that the egg yolk coats everything.

Nom.

Tastiness Rating: **** (it's still better with real bacon, but this is almost as good)

Appearance: :-( Not so much. So this is ugly tasty cake. :)

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*If you're like me, you like to set everything up before you start frying. If you separate the egg in advance, the yoke get's a bit gooey as it warms up and sticks to the sides of your bowl/whatever you put it in, instead of your pasta. Hence, refrigeration.