As someone who has lived in the Midwest for most of her life and is now a Minnesota resident, it was only a matter of time before I had hotdish on the blog.

I also knew it was only a matter of when not if with my movie choice for this pairing, “10 Things I Hate About You.”

This recipe makes 4 “servings” and is gluten-free and vegetarian.

Ingredients
8 ounces gluten-free macaroni
4 cups meatless grounds
1 cup peas
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 cup kidney beans
1 tablespoon chives
1 teaspoon asafoetida (a.k.a. hing)
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cheddar cheese

Instructions
Cook the pasta al dente according to its packaging instructions in a pot or Dutch oven. Strain the pasta and set aside.

In the same pot, thaw out your frozen ingredients over medium high heat. For us, that was the meatless grounds and peas.

Then add all of the other ingredients (including the cooked pasta) together over medium heat.

When most of the liquid is cooked off and absorbed into the other ingredients, it’s ready to eat!

The Easy Route
If you live in Minnesota, you may be able to find hotdish on a takeout menu or at the store. However, it will be difficult to find one that is both vegetarian and gluten-free.

One way to make this a little easier: Instead of putting the veggies and seasonings together on your own, substitute a can of vegetarian vegetable soup (or something similar).

The Pairing
I love “10 Things I Hate About You.” It came out when I was a teenager and featured three of my favorite actors of the era: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger.

The plot is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” Stiles and Larisa Oleynik play teenage sisters whose father (Larry Miller) refuses to allow them to date. Kat (Stiles) seems mostly uninterested, but the younger Bianca (Oleynik) has multiple suitors coming her way, including one of the most popular seniors, Joey (Andrew Keegan).

Seeing just how uninterested Kat is in dating, their father sets a new rule: Bianca can only date if Kat dates.

Cameron (Gordon-Levitt) is also interested in dating Bianca, so he and his buddy Michael (David Krumholtz) con Joey, who has money to burn from his modeling career, into paying the mysterious Patrick (Ledger) to date Kat.

Add in a fantastic turn of the millennium soundtrack, the one and only Gabrielle Union in an early role as Bianca’s friend Chastity and a memorable turn from Allison Janney as Ms. Perky, the high school’s guidance counselor, and you have one of my favorite coming-of-age films.

I may have become “Cat” thanks to Christina Ricci’s character in “Casper,” but I remained Cat because of Stiles’ Kat in “10 Things I Hate About You.”

Though it came out just before I was a high schooler, it’s a movie I watched a lot in those years to reinforce the idea that there is more to life beyond high school and where you grew up.

Yes, it’s firmly a high school movie, but it does a lot of development into who the characters are outside of the school setting and who they want to be when that time is over.

That’s why I chose this post for back-to-school season: While school can be important for a lot of different reasons, it’s only the start of the possibilities to come as folks become adults.

If you decide to make this hotdish and/or watch “10 Things I Hate About You,” let us know! Tag us in your Instagram posts & stories, tweets or TikTok videos: @veg_out_recipes