Sorry, I guess I confused you in my post about mushy pasta. It is only when I cheat and use pasta roni dinners on a night I don’t have the energy to cook dinner from scratch that I have to under cook the pasta or it turns to mush. I don’t have that problem with any other pasta I cook, just the pasta roni dinners, and only because they have done something different to the mix or their cooking instructions. I didn’t ever have that problem until more recently with the pasta roni.
I buy just about any brand of pasta I can find really cheap these days, since I am trying to cook dinners for 5 people on a very tight budget. We are trying to keep the average cost of dinners for the entire family at $5.00 or less, which in this economy is not an easy thing to do, but it can be done by watching for sales, using a little less meat, and more mushrooms and veggies in our meals. We are eating lots of rice and pasta dishes, breakfast for dinner nights, and sandwich or soup nights to help keep our food costs down.
Good for you ~ you must be doing an amazing job to keep your food costs that low! Sorry you’re struggling like that and I hope something changes to improve things soon.
Your family is lucky to have someone like you that can stretch a dollar that far! Good luck - I’m sure there are some positive changes in your future :-)
Have you seen this site?
http://www.5dollardinners.com/