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Your local welcome team is ready to visit you with a basket full of maps, civic information, gifts, and gift certi cates from local businesses. From doctors to dentists and restaurants to repairmen...we help newcomers feel right at home in their new community!

For your complimentary welcome visit, or to include a gift for newcomers, call 919.809.0220 or visit our website, www.nnws.org.

for tuna macaroni salad, rice and beans, spaghetti, and other meals that you’d never be caught dead serving in public. Below I will include the #1 struggle meal I ate when I was a poor college student that still gives my husband the dry heaves.

• 1 can of tuna (packed in water)

• 1 green pepper

• 1 cup mayonnaise (... more or less)

• 1 pound of macaroni

• salt/pepper/paprika to taste (or whatever you’re feeling, honestly) Cook up the noodles and throw them in a bowl — but rinse with cold water first so they’re not hot. Add a can of drained tuna, chopped green pepper, a cup (or whatever) of mayo, and random seasonings (I add curry powder because you can’t stop me). MIX, MIX, MIX. Keep in fridge. Offer it to your kids when you deny their requests for McDonald’s because “there’s food at home.” Watch them die inside.

Between Fuquay-Varina and Holly Springs there are five discount retailers (i.e., dollar stores of some variety). No, you can’t buy meat at these establishments (and if you could, you probably shouldn’t), but this is the place to go for nonperish-

Check out “Dollar Tree Food Hacks” on the internet (cough, TikTok) that will chop your grocery bill down to size.

able items such as canned beans, pasta, rice, ramen, baking mixes, snacks (to a point), etc. Check out “Dollar Tree Food Hacks” on the internet (cough, TikTok) that will chop your grocery bill down to size.

Go Off Brand

I’m not saying that all off-brand products are the same as name brand — that would be a bald-faced lie, and I’m not here to throw hands — but you can’t tell me that Great Value elbow macaroni doesn’t taste the same as Barilla. Or that the Great Value Ultra Soft Premium toilet paper doesn’t get the job done.

In these trying times, no one cares if you serve Food Lion gummy bears at a party or use Harris Teeter brand frozen french fries at a cookout. It goes without saying here in the South that you should never use off-brand mayonnaise, but other condiments are fine (I think). We’re all doing the best we can.

HONORABLE MENTION: THE COSTCO FOOD COURT

Listen, if you can’t spring for a Costco membership, find a friend who has one (or avoid the Costco police) and get yourself to the food court ASAP. A hotdog and a 20 oz. drink is $1.50, a pizza slice is $1.99, a chicken bake (whatever that is) is $2.99, and a BBQ beef brisket sandwich will set you back $4.99.

But tread carefully through the aisles. A trip for paper towels and alfredo sauce will inevitably lead you to a six-person sauna and a gallon of Nutella. None of us are immune.