NO-CASH CAR CRASH CARBONARA

MPB

Hey, bad drivers. Let’s chat, because you are in literally the best company.

So, let’s say you bounced your rent check, but then somehow, through a mixture of looting, “borrowing” money from “friends,” and cooking sensible meals from this book, you’ve made it through the week. Congratulations. You think you’re home free, but something else comes up. Everyone has a little money-draining habit that they just can’t kick, even when they’re really broke. My fabulous habit is getting into very minor car accidents. This is how I learned not to kick that habit, but to deal with it and continue to eat well. Let me now weave you a tale.

I arrived in Los Angeles and after two weeks of “Confidence Driving” lessons from a man named Pablo, I decided to get a rental car and show off my new moves. On my first outing with the car, I left the lights on and burned out the battery. I had to call Andrew from the rental car company to jump-start it. On my second outing, I locked myself out of it during a hike in Runyon Canyon. (That’s a canyon name drop, you guys. It’s where Lauren used to hike on The Hills.) People would go up and come back down and see me still standing there, waiting, cell phone locked in my front seat. Again, had to call Andrew (from a stranger’s phone). Finally, my third outing came and I promised myself this was the day I would make it work. Andrew would not get a call OR A TEXT today. I was running late to a meeting and driving around in circles looking for a parking spot, getting more and more anxious, when finally I hit someone. (I mean I hit another car, not a person; this isn’t where I admit to manslaughter or a hit-and-run. I’m saving that for the next book.) Out of the car I hit emerged a teenage girl in the middle of her road test, along with her DMV supervisor. I approached them and immediately began profusely apologizing. The police came and the DMV instructor said I’d admitted culpability. I didn’t think I had done anything of the sort. My natural state is just to apologize. I’m a girl; that’s apparently what we do. I fought back, but the die had been cast. To this day, I am not sure who’s to blame for that accident: Katarina, the sixteen-year-old, or myself. I do hope she got her license, though.

Once the crime scene was clear, I had to deal with the damage to my rental car, which was quite a lot. I called Andy-poo for the last time. He arrived and reminded me that I had not purchased insurance with the rental car and that I did not have any of my own. I had let him down. He towed the car, put me on the Do Not Rent list, and drove away with a disappointed look on his face. A week after getting my first car, I began paying off the damage to my first car. I also lost Andrew as a friend.

For my second car, I went to Rent-A-Wreck, a glorious place where I feel completely at home. It’s okay if you dent the cars from Rent-A-Wreck! They’re already pieces of shit! I took home a beautifully dinged-up bright blue Kia SUV with no air-conditioning, and quite shortly after doing so, I backed it into the Prius of a very prominent Los Angeles jeweler. A kind man, he didn’t take my insurance (which I now had). Instead he called me once a week to make sure I was working to pay him back. I would shake with fear listening to his voicemails. I couldn’t bear to ever pick up his calls. Finally, I got my $800 together. I walked into his diamond shop with my little check and our exchange was done. Now I’m on his Christmas card list. One day I will wear his jewels to the Oscars and I will remind him of this, and then he will take them away from me and I will be jewelry-naked at the Oscars.

After these two accidents, I really started to get down on myself. I felt like an idiot. I was making no money, looking for a steady job, and the second I got it I would have to start paying off two accidents, plus a bunch of minor scrapes that aren’t as fun to recount. I really thought I should move home and live at the foot of my parents’ bed like a groundhog forever. And just as I was finalizing my plans to do this, I got a job. So I would have to get yet another car, a nonrented car, a car that would truly be mine.

I got a used silver Nissan Altima with no radio, best suited for a family of five. I planned to do my best not to damage this car, but that was obviously not a plan I could follow. A week after getting the car, I was parking next to a bright red Mercedes convertible in a garage. Afraid of hitting the Mercedes, I parked my car extra close to the wall on the opposite side. I ended up scraping the entire left side of my car. The next week (and I’m not kidding about how quickly these accidents happened one after the other) I scraped the right side of the car when I ran into the entrance gate at Universal Studios Hollywood. All my coworkers came out to laugh at me and I held up tons of important Hollywood people that morning, but at least I made the scrapes on my car symmetrical, and symmetry is beauty.

Soon, I was getting into minor accidents all over town! I crashed my bumper into my own garage. I backed into a teen celebrity in Silver Lake. I backed into two Australian tourists. I backed into a Spanish man and his blind wife on Yom Kippur, the day in the Jewish religion when you purge yourself of all sins. I got flat tires on highways galore and knocked off both my side mirrors.

My car had gone from lightly used to something you could get at Rent-A-Wreck in a matter of weeks, and I felt really terrible about it, but I also learned some things. Obviously, I needed to be a more careful driver, but that wasn’t going to happen overnight. That was going to take time. (That is still taking time.) But I also learned that I couldn’t torture myself every time I hit my car against something. As long as everyone involved in my accident was safe—and so far, they have been—there was no reason to hate myself over it. I couldn’t go home and pout. I had to go on living my life. Running over a brick and getting a flat tire doesn’t mean you sit on the highway crying and cancel your date, it means you call AAA, sit in your car crying, and then go to your date a little late with your mascara running. I thought of this really smart phrase, shit happens, and well, it does and you’ve got to move on.

How this relates to food is as follows: You may be poor right now, and the second a new bill comes up, like one from a car accident, you may think, “Okay, Gabi and Miranda are wrong. I can’t eat well. I’m even broker than I was before!” But that’s just not true. We promise these meals will help you at your absolute brokest. More important, you will need them the most at your absolute brokest, because that is when you may feel the shittiest. After you crash your car, or your equivalent of crashing your car, you need something like carbonara to remind you that you’re okay. Don’t panic to pay your bills overnight. Set up a payment plan that allows you to live your daily life as best you can.

And if your problem, like mine, is expensive minor car accidents, then let me leave you with a final thought: Never get anything (cosmetic) fixed. If your car is safe to drive but looks like shit, who cares? Scratches are charming and create a cool damsel-in-distress vibe. Plus people will always give you the best parking spots because they’re afraid of you and want you off the road. Save your money for food, and clothes, and fun.

Anyhow, enjoy the carbonara.

Love,

A really great driver

SERVES 2

INGREDIENTS

8 ounces dried spaghetti

2 strips uncooked bacon

3 cloves garlic, sliced

2 eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup grated Parmesan

Salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS

• Cook the spaghetti according to package directions in salted boiling water. Drain, reserving ¼ cup of the cooking water.

• Heat a large dry frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook the bacon strips for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, or until brown and crisp. Discard all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon fat. Dry the bacon on paper towels and let cool. When it is cool enough, chop or crumble the bacon and set aside.

• Cook the sliced garlic in the reserved bacon fat over medium heat for 30 seconds, or just until fragrant.

• Add the drained pasta and the reserved cooking water and toss together using tongs. Cook for 1 minute, or until cooking liquid begins to absorb.

• Remove the pan from heat, add the eggs, and mix thoroughly. Continue tossing the pasta with one hand, to avoid scrambling the eggs, and add the Parmesan. Toss well. Add the crumbled bacon, season with salt and pepper to taste (careful with the salt—the bacon is already salty), and serve hot.