I’m a fan of Ms. Connie Veneracion’s food blog Home Cooking Rocks. I’m not as good as my mom in cooking and baking, but I do consider myself an able body in the kitchen. However, I do want to be a better cook so a month ago I’ve decided to cook a dish a week. So far I’ve done chicken afritada, chopseuy, and ginataang kalabasa at sitaw. This week’s dish is Carbonara the way Ms Connie cooked it.

So last Wednesday morning I finally took a stab at cooking this favorite dish of my daughter. But since I shopped in a haste, I bought plain bacon and processed cheese instead of smoked bacon and cheddar cheese. In spite of this, I was quite optimistic that the final product will turn out great. I was so optimistic that I put beef cubes in the water used to cook the spaghetti noodles as I once saw Rachel Ray did in her show.

After almost an hour, the dish was done. Here come’s the sad part. It was EDIBLE but no GREAT. My daughter, a spaghetti monster, took a mouthful and told me she was full. FULL! Right there and then I wanted to kick myself for buying the wrong bacon and the wrong cheese. I’m betting that if I used smoked bacon, it will have a better flavor. If I had use cheaddar cheese, I wouldn’t have to add salt when I served it.

Fortunately, my family appreciates my efforts to cook. They ate the whole thing without saying anything. After this fiasco, I’m swearing off cooking pasta for now and will focus on soups and desserts next.

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