Lightened Up Spaghetti Carbonara

I feel like for most of us the words "healthy" and "light" really mean "boring" or "tasteless". Whenever I eat diet foods that are supposed to taste like their fully loaded counterparts, they usually tend to be more reminiscent of cardboard than lighter versions of the original.

I recently told my husband I was going to work on a recipe for a healthy carbonara, and he understandably snickered. After all, if you're going to eat something called carbonara, it better well taste like three darn good things: Parmesan, bacon and pasta -- and "light" is not an adjective I'd use to describe any of those foods! So instead of substituting ingredients, I simply use less of the offending ones (except cream, that one doesn't make the cut here). I also like to use a combination of eggs and pasta water to help retain the lusciousness and creaminess of a classic carbonara.

On the day I was making this, my hubby came charging into the kitchen, having caught a whiff of the cooking bacon wafting through the house. However, as soon as he realized that this was my "carbonara light" experiment, he retreated, thinking it would taste terrible. After a bit of arm twisting, I succeeded in getting him to try it. Three bowls later, hubby asked that I please remove him from the kitchen before he ate the whole pot.

Which reminds me: this dish serves six, but if you eat it all on your own, it's definitely no longer qualifies as light!