Asklemmy

You need to hit up the food bank. They give out food. No questions asked. Fresh veggies and fruits and plenty of ready to go meals. There's no shame in it. I've been in your situation many times and churches very often are giving out free food to people who need it. Again no one will question your situation. You just go there and get your food and leave.

As @[email protected] said, please try the food bank. You'll wreck yourself if you try to survive only on pasta and tomato sauce even if it's just for a month. Where do you live?

You can peel off a few layers at a time of onion and leave the smaller sphere in the fridge or even on the counter for a pretty good while (maybe two weeks or so). That won't stink up anything.

Do you have a fridge? If so, you can just stick half an onion (not minced, obviously) straight in the fridge for a few days just fine. The exposed surface will dry out slightly, but that's not an issue if you're just using them for sauce. I usually use a whole onion per dish anyways, since I love onions, and they're a dirt cheap way to add flavor and some semblance of vegetables to a meal.

If you have a freezer, frozen peas are also really cheap and nutritious, and they basically only need to be thawed. Plain pasta with salt, little bit of butter or oil, splash of vinegar, some of the pasta water (all those starches in the pasta water will help a simple sauce come together), and frozen peas is really cheap and easy, yet somehow really tasty.

You can also bulk it up if you add beans. Beans are cheapest if you buy a bag of them dry at some place like walmart (I prefer pinto beans and chickpeas, but you can go with any beans you like) instead of going for canned. Just soak the dry beans in a bowl of water overnight on the counter, replace the water, then boil them on the stove for about an hour (until they're soft) and strain. Chickpeas also taste pretty good with pasta.

Other options if you have a fridge is to crack an egg into the pasta right after you've strained it and mixing it so it can cook in the residual heat. You can also chop up a hotdog and put it in your sauce. Surprisingly tasty.

You can get by without tupperware to store leftovers if you eat just one or two big meals a day; it allows you to do more in bulk with a one-pot meal, with less preparation, and you just eat it all in one go. I also find I can get away with leaving it on the counter for up to a couple hours and then finishing it if I don't want to eat it all in just one sitting.

Also, the cheat codes to making food taste good, even if not fancy, are salt, fat, and acid. Even plain pasta tastes really good if it's properly salted and given a generous drizzle of oil and vinegar. Bouillon cubes are also a good cheat code to making things taste better for cheap. Heck, you can even buy a cheap bottle of vinaigrette salad dressing (e.g., italian or greek dressing) and pour that on your pasta for a basic pasta "salad".

Please don't assume that you sound, or believe that you are, stupid or clueless. Whatever you're going through won't get any better if you beat yourself up, even sarcastically. Take care, you'll pull through!

Ok so half cut onions might smell up your fridge, but otherwise they're just most likely to dehydrate without being covered in the fridge for a week. Also onions can prematurely ripen other produce when stored in the same place. Whole onions store well outside the fridge for weeks, even a month. Potatoes are the same.

Sealed food storage is best though, so if you find some leftover plastic containers they sell takeaway food in, washing and reusing these can be a free option. Same with glass jars. Check goodwill for Tupperware too.

Lemons I leave cut in the fridge for well over a week and they just dehydrate a little on the outside, I've only ever seen one get a little mold, most things can't live in that acidic an environment.

Most other things freeze really well, if that is an option for you. If you do buy fresh, you can increase their fridge lifespans by washing and then thoroughly drying them. The best veg are ones you can buy with the roots still attached, those can be planted or kept in the fridge a long while with the roots kept wet.