Because I’ve always been a baker first, I’m a stick-to-a-recipe kinda gal when it comes to cooking. Thankfully, my husband is the exact opposite: he refuses to even look at a cookbook, and is always concocting the most unbelievably delicious dishes from various ingredient combinations. The Carbonara pictured above (taken with a crappy mobile phone camera) is one of our favorite dishes here at home. It’s based on a recipe I downloaded from the Pioneer Woman, by Pastor Ryan, with a few choice tweaks:

• We use Fettuccine instead of Linguine, because we always have Fettuccine in the house.
• We use two cups of stock, and omit the white wine. We’ve used Chicken Stock and Beef Broth, and both were delicious.
• We add about half a block of an 8 oz. block of Cream Cheese to the egg mixture, mashing it all up.

Did the Cream Cheese throw you? We wanted a creamier Carbonara, and I was all set to add some heavy cream to the recipe, when the husband suggested using Cream Cheese instead. Actually, he recommended Mascarpone- which just goes to show you how much he knows about what’s in our pantry on a daily basis. What we always have is Cream Cheese, so that’s what I used- and it. was. awesome.