I am the new Rachel Ray

Minus the good looks and established fan base. Although I've whined incessantly about my ATM problems and inability to get cash in this country, I've got a longer term problem of not being paid for my work until the beginning of November. In good spirits I've taken this as a sign to be more frugal in my spending.

The second challenge associated with spending less is finding creative ways to prepare the same base set of ingredients. I'm a chronic over eater so this is major problem. I watched someone else make spaghetti and I noticed they heated the tomato sauce in olive oil first, before pouring it in the pasta. After eating spaghetti this way for two weeks, I have to say it makes the sauce somehow more fragrant with a greater depth of flavor. Of course, this observation may be in error much the way one sees color after hitting ones head on a white wall several times.

Another money saving tactic is to purposely increase your breadth of flavors slowly. For example, if I want to eat meat sauce, I don't. I eat plain sauce for a week until I am so sick of it, then I go and buy meat. If I'd had meat from the get-go, would I be buying scallops now? For this reason I just broke down and bought a jar of pepper yesterday. I also have basil but I haven't opened it, maybe after the salt runs out.

Finally, make the food hotter. If the temperature is high enough, your taste buds can't tell the difference. That's why some restaurants serve food on plates straight from the kiln. A burning hand, burning mouth, the latter is more convenient for me.

Now onto the deals.

1. Pasta is cheep. Well, relatively. Stores always have pasta on sale, so you can get a kilo for under a euro. Plus with an enormous diversity of shapes, you can imagine, akin to the M&M syndrome, that they all taste different.

2. Sauce is cheap and basic. Unlike the US where you can find more sauce flavors than Heinz has varieties (herein lies the point, you really only need one good one) here it seems the "flavored" sauces are relegated to a small corner of the shelf, the rest stocked with endless rows of tomatoes cooked in water. Not even basil is added. The best part is the price: everyday, 700g for 0.50 euros. Sometimes when I am in a rush I just drink it from the bottle.

3. Breads, and starchy substances. All it would take is one meal here to do in poor Mr. Atkins, if all that bacon fat hadn't gotten him first. Bread is everywhere and eaten always. All sorts of delicious breads, as well as the most boring, dry flat breadsticks. After a few minutes of chewing they still feel like napkins stuffed in your mouth. Their only use is to desiccate your mouth after drinking pasta sauce. (see above) The good news is the bakeries are open around 6am, and several stay open past 10 at night. Bread is cheap, and when it's dry enough you can put it in milk like cereal.

4. Cookies. I don't know why they're so cheap, but I get bags of different kinds, (well that's a stretch it's the same sort of dough in different shapes) one kilo for 0.75 euros. That's a bargain. For breakfast you can break them up and mix it with the dried bread for a sweetened cereal, or you can eat them crushed with yogurt. They have a mild malty sweetness that goes well with everything.

All in all, even though my lunch is being paid for (a big help, I eat all the rolls when no one is looking) I am eating breakfast and lunch for under 30 euros a week. I should be Rachel Ray's guest guide while she's in Italy. She won't be eating Prosciutto, that's for sure.