By: Rehana Hayat, Peak Associate

As we go back to school and gradually find less time to prepare home-cooked meals, I wanted to share my family’s recipe for making a baked pasta, with a relatively light taste profile. I encourage you to share this delicious yet simple dish with your loved ones. This recipe makes at least two servings.

Ingredients

• 1 packet of dry pasta
• 1 block of cheddar cheese
• 1 jar of your choice of tomato sauce
• 1 bag of spinach
• Ground beef to your liking
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon of cooking oil

Instructions

1. Boil the dry pasta in a pot that is half-filled with water on the stovetop for 20 minutes, or until boiling point is reached. 
2. Cover the pasta in the pot and let it rest for another 20 minutes before draining the water.
3. Using a separate pot, place in a tablespoon of cooking oil. Then, put in ground beef that was thawed beforehand. Break the ground beef into smaller pieces and sautée the beef for a few minutes. 
4. Next, add in the spinach, chopped onion slices, and the tomato sauce into the pot containing the ground beef. Stir all these ingredients together. 
5. In the end, the ground beef should look well done, the spinach should become wilted and darker, and the onion slices caramelized. These signs show that the ingredients were cooked correctly in the sauce.
6. Prepare an oven tray, and add in the wet pasta noodles. Sprinkle some grated cheddar cheese on top. Then, add in the sauce. Place this tray into the oven; let it bake at 350 degrees for around 40 minutes (for extra crispiness). Once that is done, your pasta is ready!
7. Alternatively, if you don’t have an oven, you can also choose to heat up the pasta together with the rest of the ingredients in the same pot on the stove top.

If you are looking for a healthy, affordable, and quick meal as a student navigating the busy fall term, pasta just might be the perfect fit for you. Not only are the ingredients easy to get your hands on, you can make larger portions of this dish for meal prep — a solid choice for a student with so many other commitments!