Une Table For Four

Okay, so dinner tonight was a major disaster. D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

The dish itself was delicious and far from being forgettable. So, what went wrong, you might ask?

Let me paint a picture of my life. I grew up with a French dad that is stubborn, close-minded, and refuses to admit he’s ever wrong. I used to ask myself how he ever got through life with these negative traits. I still wonder to myself if he’s always been that way or maybe he’s acquired it through time because I don’t know how you can travel around the world and still be close-minded. Anyways, a couple of years ago, my Filipina mother passed away. And a couple years after that, I got married to a wonderful man. Days before my wedding, I could not help but think about my new life. I was becoming someone’s wife and I thought of my dad. What would happen to him? Would he live alone? We’d never talked about it in the months of wedding preparation. How did that topic never come up? I was seriously getting depressed. I loved my husband but I could not grasp the idea of letting him live alone at 75 years old. On my mom’s death bed, he promised he would never love another woman, and he never did after that. Could I leave him then? No I could not. I was torn.

Like I said earlier, I married a wonderful man. I guess he must have known something was wrong with me. I could not hold this dilemma to myself any longer. In the end, he agreed that we couldn’t leave my dad to live alone. He sold his place and we moved in with my dad. We spent days making charts about the household expenses, basically we were living at my dad’s house, but we were taking care of all the expenses. This was perfect for my husband, whose only condition was that he did not want my dad supporting us. My dad was hesitant at first. The man who was responsible for supporting my mom and I for so many years had to finally relinquish his powers. But I convinced him that this change was for the best. I told him that it was time for him to spend his money solely on himself and maybe someday on his grandchildren.

I now have a 16 month old daughter who has become her grandfather’s princess. Funny how she is becoming more and more like her grandfather. Yes, she is stubborn too. Whatever she wants, she gets. And I honestly have become too exhausted to argue with my dad about this. I love him, but our fights can be pretty bad. But once we’re done, it ends there. It’s as if no fight ever happened. Tonight, we had one of those fights which made this dinner a disaster.

I’ve always wanted to eat Spaghetti Carbonara the “traditional way”. Where there is no cream and the pasta is merely coated with the mixture of cheese and eggs. I read about this once on the internet and I’ve always wanted to try it out someday. Dad makes a pretty good carbonara but he uses cream and I wanted to see the difference. For some reason, this annoyed him and riled me up! We ended up eating dinner in quiet anger and no one dared to make a single peeping sound, not even Baby! I was fuming mad. What was so wrong in change?!? Probably what made it worst was that the spaghetti was delicious and I couldn’t even smile about it! I honestly could have finished the whole bowl by myself (yes, I’m an emotional eater). I don’t want to flatter myself but this was probably the best Carbonara I’ve ever had in my life. I couldn’t even tell that there was no cream in the sauce because the mixture of the cheese and eggs made it seem like there was cream. I don’t even think Dad would have noticed there was no cream if I didn’t mention it earlier. And despite the angry smoke coming out of my ears and nose, I could not help noticing Dad helping himself to a second plate.

So yeah, I’m definitely making this again and I’m not telling anything to anyone next time!

Spaghetti Carbonara

Ingredients:

• 1 pack Spaghetti, boiled and drained
• 250 grams Pancetta (Italian Bacon), cut in strips
• 250 grams Parmesan
• 4 Eggs
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions:

Heat olive oil in pan and fry the pieces of pancetta. Meanwhile, beat the eggs well. Add in the parmesan cheese and mix well. Season with salt and pepper. Add the cooked pasta into the pan that has the fried bacon. Toss the bacon, olive oil, and pasta well. Pour in the egg and cheese mixture and mix well until pasta is well-coated. Serve and enjoy!

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