Secretly Budget Pasta

Benetta
Silver Post Medal for All Time! 408 Posts

November 23, 20160 found this helpful

Looks yummy!

attosa
Diamond Post Medal for All Time! 1,246 Posts

December 3, 20160 found this helpful

It is ;) Thank you, Benetta!

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bryguy
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 167 Feedbacks

January 26, 20221 found this helpful

That's a luxury dish compared our version in college! Instead of pasta, we used instant ramen. And instead of fresh veggies, we used a pack of Asian Stir Fry or California Blend frozen vegetables (the latter had mushrooms, but the former had multicolored peppers). Generally, for 2 people, we used 3 packs of ramen and ½-1 pack of veggies, depending on how poor we were. Since we bought everything from Dollar Tree, the total cost was less than $2 (they recently raised the price of everything to $1.25). Ramen was $1 for 5-6 packs, and the veggies were $1. If it was a special occasion, or we felt decadent, we added a little meat in the form of shredded deli cold cuts, about 50 cents for 2-3 slices.

The ramen came with seasoning packs so there was no need for flavor granules. For variety, we sometimes used 2 tablespoons of Dollar Tree salad dressing instead of the flavor packs. Caesar and Ranch were especially nice. A bonus was that instant ramen cooks faster than pasta, about 2-3 mins, and like the veggies, it can be cooked in the microwave. The biggest difference is that the ramen has no starch so we didn't have any sauce (no college kid has cornstarch or arrowroot in their dorm). It was more like Chinese lo mein or chow mein. But for starving college students short on time and money, it was relatively healthy and kept us full.

Good times.