Little Italy on a Budget: 3 Easy Dinners with Big Flavor (MM#10)

Nothing hits the spot quite like a comforting pasta dish or a hearty marinara meal, but let’s be real: they can take forever to make, heat up the whole kitchen, and feel like way too much effort in the summertime.

That’s why we put together this Little Italy Mini Menu featuring three low-effort, no-oven dinners that are still full of flavor and comfort.

Best of all, they’re budget-friendly! We grabbed everything for under $30 at Walmart. These meals are flexible too, so feel free to adapt them to what you have on hand. Before heading to the store, check your fridge, pantry, and freezer because you might already have a few key ingredients!

Grocery List Needed for the Mini Menu

If you want to see the full shopping list on Walmart in your area, all you have to do is click my Walmart Grocery list and change the zip code to your area. *This is an affiliate link, and I do make a small commission on any purchases, but at no additional cost to you!*

**** Please note, that every once in a while, an item that I pick turns out to be regional. This means that it may be a much higher price in some areas. Always double check the list and if you see an item that is much higher than normal, just adjust as needed.

Italian Sausage Toasts with Marinara & Spinach Salad

Ok, let’s be honest…. calling it Toasts is just a fancy spin on flat meatball open faced sandwiches! That is basically what we are making, and it could not be any easier! Don’t want to use sausage? Totally fine, you can make your mini patties/meatballs with ground turkey, ground chicken, ground beef, ground pork, etc.

Garlic Butter Mushroom Pasta with Chicken

I am a huge fan of a butter sauce and pasta. The trick to making it super quick is using a premade butter spread that already has all the wonderful extra flavors like garlic and herbs. Of course you can make your own, but this is just low effort yumminess here!

Pesto Gnocchi with Tomatoes & Chicken

Gnocchi are not just for restaurants; it is super easy to make at home! This quick dish can easily be swapped out for alfredo sauce or even the other half of that jar of marinara sauce. You can also add extra vegetables to this dish as well.

Possible Variations

This week we are using a pound of ground sausage and a rotisserie chicken, but you can easily change these out. We mentioned above swapping sausage or any ground meat, but you can also swap out the rotisserie chicken too.

I am trying to get in the habit right now of pre-cooking meats and freezing them for later. So just like a rotisserie chicken, you can cook a big batch of chicken (any cut) and shred or dice it. Then store in a Ziploc in your fridge!

Easy peasy, you just take it out and add it to whatever dish you are cooking. No real defrosting required, but you could pull it the night before as well.

Free Printable Grocery List & Recipes

Here is a 1-page cheat sheet that includes the grocery list as well as all the recipes you need to make this budget mini menu work!

Don’t forget to check out our full week menus, as well as join our email newsletter for more fun and affordable meal ideas!