You can easily make meatless spaghetti; the hardest part is boiling the noodles. If you've got a hotplate, a medium pot, and a colander, that's perfect, but you can make do with one of the little $10 "hot pot" things. You just need the ability to boil some water, and hold it at boiling for about eight minutes. Buy a jar of sauce, heat that in the microwave while the noodles, and you're golden. If you shop carefully for a sauce with good ingredients, it can even be reasonably healthy.

You can also do your own sauce, which takes a lot longer, but then you know exactly what's in it. Use a can of crushed tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of Italian seasoning blend (Costco sells a great blend in a big spice jar, will last ages), a tablespoon of dried minced onion, half a tablespoon of garlic powder, a half-teaspoon or so of black pepper, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Optional ingredient: dried red chili pepper, if you like hot spaghetti. (love it, myself.) Mix it all up in a cooking dish or quart-size glass measuring cup, add salt to taste, cover it (paper towels are okay if you're using a cup) and cook it down into sauce.

The 'proper' way is a long slow cook: three minutes at 100% to heat it up, and then about 85 minutes at 20% power to slowly cook it down into sauce. This gradually evaporates the liquid and turns the tomatoes into a nice sauce. You can do it much faster, but it won't blend quite as well or taste quite as good; twenty minutes or so at 50% power is usually decent, depending on the microwave.

This makes a surprisingly tasty spaghetti, and doesn't cost a lot. You can optionally brown up some hamburger and add it, but that adds dishes and complexity.

It's vastly easier to just buy a sauce, which is why they're so popular. Cooking it yourself keeps the cost at about $3/batch. One batch might last you two meals, but depending on how many noodles you use, you'll probably eat the whole thing.