Carbonara schmarbonara

Have you ever tried to make carbonara with milk instead of cream? Chances are if you are swedish, it would never have crossed your mind;)
Swedish people love their cream. They even see fit to add it to things where it has no business being, like simple Bolognese sauces. Hard to imagine for some, especially if you are greek or italian I suppose, but here it is more or less the norm. Lately, swedish people have been more turned on to the new food possibilities around them, they are starting to use more and more olive oil, which truly elates me. I mean, cream, save for a few examples, makes everything taste blander to me. Plus it is not really good for you. Olive oil just lifts every flavour and brings it out, interacting beautifully with all the spices. But then again, Sweden is the country in which they take butter, melt it, add cream and a slight amount of tarragon and call it bearnaise sauce. It's just not the same.
Anyway, I personally like to use milk wherever I can, especially creamy condensed milk. This is one of those cases. I made a very simple carbonara by sauteing some mushroom, garlic and some chopped asparagus and ham, adding the boiled basta and mixing in some undiluted condensed milk and an egg, letting everything heat up and serving straight away. You don't want to let this one cool down at all. The consistency looks a little thinner, but the taste is definately creamy, and less fat as well. This idea ties in perfectly with the end of my two weeks of incessant work and no time for actual food shopping. I have been stretching the stash in the cupboard for 2 weeks now, good folk. I don't know how this happened, but it did. You know what it means when you're down to your last jar of canned tomatoes and you are basically out of everything else. So this is just a small example of what one can do in a cinch, as long as you make sure you always have the absolute necessary things in your stash.