Pasta nights saved cash when I was a kid. Still my budget fix today.

3 comments

3 Comments

Turn pasta into a full meal by adding canned tuna or a handful of beans for cheap protein. My mom would throw in leftover veggies from the week to make it stretch. Now I keep a few jars of basic marinara for those tight weeks. You can change it up with different shapes like rotini or farfalle so it never gets boring. It's crazy how a two dollar box still feeds me for three days.

carr.river3d ago

My garlic bread has caught fire more times than I'd care to admit, so my survival is pretty much tied to that two dollar box of pasta. Been eating the same lemon-pepper tuna rotini for three days straight and I'm not even mad about it. At this point my spice rack is just for show, since everything ends up tasting like marinara anyway. I've gotten so good at stretching a single jar that it's basically a party trick. My cooking skills are a public service, really, showing people how low the bar can actually go.

dakota_butler3911h ago

Actually that whole mindset is part of the problem. Pasta is cheap but it's empty calories that just leave you hungry again faster, so you're not really saving money. Calling bad cooking a public service just makes it okay to live on junk, and that's not funny, it's sad. Learning a few basic skills would save more money and your health in the long run. That "stretching a jar" pride is just settling for a boring, unhealthy life.