I have two regularly occurring meals on my weekly rotation – Taco Tuesday and Spaghetti Thursday. These are the two days of the week where it’s a) easy, b) no complaints, and c) cheap. So, when I tell people that I plan my weekly meals a month out and hear gasps, I explain that eight days are already done.
Maybe this is my middle-class upbringing. Well, let’s be honest – we were poor. OK, maybe lower-middle-class by the time I hit high school. I lived in the Deep South, where even my dreams of going to college were laughed at. Granted, I went into debt to go to college, but I did it. And though I’m in the last stages of paying off that college debt, I can say I’ve broken myself (and my family) out of the cyclical system of poverty.
But those ‘poor’ meals are still deeply entrenched in my being. Comfort is a bowl of cut-up hot dogs and beans. Warmth is sliced, buttered white bread with chipped beef gravy slathered on top. And Thursdays were always spaghetti night. Nothing but canned sauce, cheap noodles, and the aforementioned sliced white bread – this time with garlic salt – to fill a kid’s tummy full before bath time.
Spaghetti night has found its way to my weekly rotation, even holding Thursday as its ritualistic day of honor. I have improved upon some of those childhood traditions while still keeping things on the cheap.
- Meatballs: Instead of the occasional treat of ground beef in our spaghetti sauce, I batch-make meatballs. I pull out a few from the freezer and thaw them in the sauce on the stove.
- Good sauce: I splurge on the good stuff. Lately, it’s been Rao’s from Costco. But I’ve also been known to batch-make my own sauce and freeze it. Honestly, for the time I need to carve out to prep, cook, store, and freeze the sauce, I think it’s worth the extra few bucks to buy quality sauce.
- Noodles: I also bulk purchase quality noodles. However, in recent years, I’ve been diagnosed with gluten sensitivity. I still buy regular noodles in bulk, but I tend to get cheaper rice noodles found in the Asian section of the store rather than corn noodles.
I like to think of it as ‘upscale spaghetti.’ I still get to relive a bit of my childhood while keeping my meal-planning sanity and saving a few dollars. And so what if we do it every Thursday night? Spaghetti Thursday signals that the week is almost over. And that’s something we can all embrace.
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