Ham and Pasta Skillet Dinner

There's a rhythm to DeKalb that I forgot over the summer. It's flat here — flat in a way that Oak Lawn isn't, flat in a way that makes the sky enormous and the corn infinite and the wind a personal insult. The campus sits in the middle of all that flatness like someone dropped a collection of brick buildings into a field and said, "Learn here." I'm learning. I'm learning Special Education Law, which is mostly about how the federal government wrote beautiful promises in 1975 and then spent the next forty years underfunding them. I take notes with the fervor of a woman who is going to use this information to fight for kids who can't fight for themselves, and also with the fervor of a woman who paid eighty-seven dollars for this textbook and intends to get her money's worth.

I drove home this weekend — it was my every-other-weekend trip, the one I've been making since sophomore year, the one where I pretend I'm coming home to do laundry but really I'm coming home to check on everyone. Dad's knees are bothering him. He won't say it but he walks different — slower on the stairs, careful getting out of the truck. He's fifty-four. Plumbers' knees don't last. I didn't say anything. You don't tell Steve Kowalczyk his body is failing him. You just carry the laundry basket upstairs yourself and pretend the dryer was already going.

I saw Jess on Saturday. We got Portillo's — Italian beef, dipped, hot peppers, the sandwich that holds this entire metropolitan area together. She looked thin. Not sick-thin, maybe, but thin. She ate half her sandwich and said she'd been sleeping a lot. I asked if she was still seeing Diane. She said yeah, mostly. Mostly. I hate the word mostly. Mostly is the crack in the sidewalk you don't notice until you trip. I ate my Italian beef and did not say any of the twelve things I wanted to say because I am learning, slowly, that love is sometimes just sitting in a Portillo's and not asking the question you're dying to ask.

Sunday I made chili in the slow cooker I brought back from home — Mom's old one, the kind with two settings: low and lower. Ground beef, kidney beans, diced tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, onion, garlic. Eight hours on low. The dorm smelled like a kitchen, which is the nicest thing a dorm has ever smelled like. I ate it over rice with shredded cheese and called Mom at 7:15 because she didn't call me, which means she forgot, which means she's fine. Moms who forget to worry are moms who are okay. I'll take it.

The chili gets me through Sunday and most of Monday — but it’s Tuesday night, when the weekend has fully evaporated and the reading load is back and I’m still thinking about the word mostly, that I need something I can make fast without thinking too hard. This ham and pasta skillet is that meal. One pan, twenty-five minutes, ingredients I can get at the Jewel-Osco on Sycamore without spending more than eight dollars. It doesn’t smell as good as the chili does filling up the dorm hallway, but it’s warm, it’s real food, and some nights that’s exactly the right amount of okay.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cups rotini or penne pasta, uncooked
1 1/2 cups cooked ham, diced
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella or cheddar cheese
Salt to taste

Instructions

Sauté aromatics. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add diced onion and cook 3–4 minutes until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more, stirring so it doesn’t burn.
Add ham and tomatoes. Stir in the diced ham and cook 2 minutes until lightly browned. Pour in the diced tomatoes with their juices and stir to combine.
Add liquid and pasta. Pour in the chicken broth and water. Add the uncooked pasta, Italian seasoning, and black pepper. Stir everything together and bring to a boil.
Simmer until pasta is tender. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover with a lid, and cook 12–14 minutes, stirring once or twice, until pasta is cooked through and most of the liquid is absorbed. Add a splash more water if it looks dry before the pasta is done.
Add peas and cheese. Stir in frozen peas and cook uncovered for 2 minutes. Taste for salt. Remove from heat, sprinkle cheese over the top, and let it melt for 1 minute before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Ham and Pasta Skillet Dinner — The Dorm Room Meal That Keeps Me Going