Easy Pasta for Bacherlors/Bachelorettes

Hi, my name is Candice and I live alone. There, I said it out loud. It's no big deal, really, it's just that I've never lived alone before. People my age are getting engaged and buying homes with their partners while I'm learning to cook instead.

This is a wonderful dish I made tonight for the first time with (telephonic) directions from my boyfriend before I started just in case I fucked anything up. Basically, it's my spin on the Primi Primo pasta and it's not hard to make.


Ok, I wish this was mine. Mine was a bit more mushy, but it'll look something like that minus stupid herb...

Ingredients - Hopefully you have most, but what I had to buy cost me R40
250g bits of bacon (R16)
150-200g mushrooms, sliced (R10)
1 small onion or half a big one, diced (R2)
250 ml fresh cream - I like those little plastic clover containers (R12)
250 ml milk (any type is fine)
2-3 tablespoons flour
Fuckloads of grated cheese (200g should do it) (R15)
1 block of feta cheese, plain or black pepper (optional)
250g spaghetti pasta
Oil or spray-on oil, whatever you use for frying

Cook the noodles
Easy - fill a pot 3/4 full of water (not hot, else the noodles stick)
Chuck in like a teaspoon of oil and half a teaspoon of salt if you like
Break the noodles in half if you prefer, I do, but just put them in the water
Put it on about temperature 4 and let it go for about 20 minutes until the noodles are soft.

While the noodles are cooking...

Fry the bits
This is my hot boyfriend's method which works pretty well.
First, fry the bacon until it's ALMOST fully cooked, and remove it from the pan temporarily.
Brown the onion in the same pan and once it's looking good, throw the bacon back in and the mushrooms as well. You wanna do the mushies last so they don't shrink too much. Basically as soon as the bacon is fully cooked, and the mushies are brown, take the pan off heat and keep it one side.

Time for the cheese sauce
This one is a bit tricky because it's never the same every time, so just keep adding stuff as you need. Throw the cream into a pot or large pan on about temperature level 3. Chuck in a bit of flour and stir it up until the flour is fairly well dissolved. Start throwing in some grated cheese and stir constantly until the cheese starts melting and the mixture looks like a cheese sauce. Keep mixing up the flour and cheese and gradually add some milk (you don't have to use it all) just to make it spread a bit better.

Mix it all up
If you can now fit all the ingredients into the same pan or pot, do so and mix em nicely until the noodles are well sauced and the bacon/mushroom/onion combination is distributed well.

Serves 4.
Costs R40-R60 depending on what ingredients you have at home.

*Picture from http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/food/130868/Vanessa-Jones--039--pasta-with-bacon-and-cheese-sauce