Harissa rigatoni with kale, sausage & pine nuts: $2.10/serving

Harissa, a North African spice paste made with dried peppers, seems to be having a moment. I hadn’t even heard of it five years ago, and all of a sudden it seems to be everywhere—on TV shows like Top Chef, on restaurant menus…even on the shelf at Williams-Sonoma. In fact, any gourmet store likely to carry a jar of the stuff is probably going to charge anywhere from $9 to $13 for it. Which is too bad, because it’s quite versatile as a condiment—spread on sandwiches, stirred into soups, added to pizza, and tossed with pasta, such as in this quick-‘n’-healthy weeknight dish. Making your own harissa from scratch only takes about 30 minutes from start to finish (most of it passive time soaking the peppers) and is less than half the cost of the store-bought stuff, so it’s easy to make up a batch on a weekend and freeze it in little bags for future use.

Baked orzo with sage pesto: $1.04/serving

If you’re like many gardeners this time of year, you probably have (or have access to) a large, lush, healthy bush of sage…waiting for October or November. Sage is usually considered a fall herb, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. Combined with a little mint, parsley, and/or basil to offset its medicinal taste, sage makes an unexpected, light, summery pesto. It’s great by itself on pasta, but even better in this baked orzo dish that comes together quickly and makes enough servings to last through the week, for lunches or emergency dinners on days it gets too hot.

Creamy lemon pasta with olives & basil: $1.01/serving

Because basil is finicky to grow from seed outdoors—and doesn’t last as long once it gets going—we’re currently on our second planting of basil in the indoor Aerogarden, timed (hopefully) to coincide with the ripening of our larger heirloom tomatoes. Unfortunately, this means we’re currently having to buy basil, as I did for a lemon-basil cake I made for a party this past weekend. Do you have any idea how much basil costs in the store? Either $1.99 for a few limp sprigs packed into a plastic clamshell case, or upward of $3.50 for a “hydroponically grown” (with, incomprehensibly, dirt clods attached to the roots) or living bunch. You’d better believe I’m using every last minuscule leaf of that stuff. All I had left was enough for a sprinkling over this vaguely Greek-inspired pasta, which is good hot but even better cold as a salad. I must say, though, the basil completely made the dish, and may have earned it a spot in our regular rotation once the home-grown basil gets going.

Bacon mac ’n’ cheese: $1.17/serving

Those who remember the bone marrow mac ’n’ cheese and the cheese-stuffed mac ’n’ cheese pie know I’m not shy about taking a perfectly reliable institution and making it…well…wrong. Or, at least, as much more wrong as a big pan of cheese, bread and pasta can possibly get. This version, I reckon to say, is probably even worse for you than the stuff that comes in the blue box, assuming you find artery-clogging fat and nitrates slightly below artificial “cheez” and preservatives on the acceptability scale. But it’s worth it, especially since “upscale comfort food” of this nature is in vogue now and can run you $7 or more for a wee little serving at a pretentious gastropub. For $7, you’ll have enough of this to eat for days. (Worried you’ll get tired of it? Don’t. I made this last week and would happily still be eating it today if we had it around.)

Gemelli with sungold tomatoes, beans & olives: 63 cents/serving

We had our first harvest of sungold tomatoes this week, and as difficult as it was for me to refrain from eating them right off the plant (although I admit there may have been a few that “fell”), I managed to accumulate enough to make this pasta dish. It’s a light, quick, cheap, and filling warm-weather meal, especially with the beans, and it can, of course, be made with any variety of cherry or grape tomato. I also used fresh oregano, but I didn’t like it all that much with the olives, so I’m recommending you use basil.

Fresh oregano pesto: $1.15/serving

If I could go back three years and undo one of my many newbie gardening mistakes, it would undoubtedly be planting herbs in our raised beds. Specifically, rosemary, sage, thyme, mint and oregano. I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking, but as anyone with half a brain cell could have predicted, they’ve all become mutant bushes of death that have taken over and choked out anything within a 5-foot radius. Thankfully, most the herbs are (almost) making up for the inconvenience with their usefulness. Not so much the oregano, however. Sure, I use it here and there, but it’s not sturdy like rosemary, sage and thyme, or supremely versatile like mint. I don’t know why it took me so long to try it in a pesto, but I think it may have found its new calling. Not only does it use up a lot of the leaves, but this pesto tastes incredible; full of fresh-oregano flavor without being overpowering. Try it on pasta.

Farfalle with bacon, goat cheese, rosemary & arugula: $1.77/serving

As I’ve mentioned before, pregnant folks are not supposed to eat soft cheeses—goat cheese, blue cheese, Brie, et al.—due to the risk of contracting listeria. Never mind that most commercial soft cheeses available in grocery stores are made from pasteurized milk, and that the listeria danger comes chiefly from unpasteurized milk. It’s kind of like the alcohol thing…yes, studies show a beer or a glass of wine here and there isn’t going to cause any harm, but WHAT IF? It doesn’t matter how irrational the claim. If you’re pregnant, you’ve been told not to do something, and you’re even the slightest bit neurotic to begin with, there’s no way you’ll be able to bring yourself to do it. And so it is with me and eating goat cheese that hasn’t been cooked. This means any consumption of goat cheese (and there can’t not be consumption of goat cheese; I’ve given up a lot of things, but that’s not going to be one of them) must be worked into an existing dinner somehow, like the cheese-stuffed mac ’n’ cheese pie, or this pasta, which I admit I was kind of obsessed with even before I went and got myself knocked up.

Garlic scallion noodles: 48 cents/serving

This is a terrific, flavor-packed weeknight meal that can be whipped up in minutes using pantry staples, some green onions, oyster sauce, and Vietnamese fish sauce. I made it specifically to use up some Chinese egg noodles I had wearing out their welcome in the fridge, but you can also use just plain ol’ spaghetti and I promise it’ll be just as good. You could also add meat or fried tofu for protein, if you’re so inclined, although it most certainly doesn’t cry out for any additions, especially given the amounts of butter and sugar in play here. (Trust me—you won’t be sorry.)

Baked orzo with beef & mushrooms: $1.21/serving

Nothing particularly brilliant or groundbreaking about this meal; I had a little bit of beef sirloin and a small bowl of chopped shallots that needed to be used up, as well as a can of whole tomatoes from the pantry that was already two months past its sell-by date (one of the pitfalls of buying in bulk at Grocery Outlet). It would’ve been easy to just grind up the beef and make a simple sauce to serve over pasta, but I added mushrooms and orzo and chose to bake it for something a little different. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, feel free to experiment with different kinds of ground meat, different mushrooms, and even different cheese (I used Parmesan because it’s what I had), as your budget permits.

Pork and noodles in coconut-tamarind sauce: $1.52/serving

As a frozen bag of chipotle chiles in adobo (just empty out the can into a Ziploc) is to Mexican cooking, a frozen bag of tamarind paste is to Thai cooking: indispensable. It’s extremely versatile (you can use tamarind in place of lime juice) and you can always be sure you have some on hand. Tamarind paste can be found in brick form in pretty much any Asian market, and frozen, it lasts pretty much forever. I’ve probably had the same block in my freezer for almost two years, and I’m just now getting to the last little chunk. It’s great for any kind of curry or pad Thai, desserts, and thrown-together weeknight dishes like this one that could benefit from a little sweet tanginess.