I Don't Know What to Make for Dinner. Again.

A commitment to show up and write my truth | Day 285 of 365

I don't know what to make for dinner.

I wish I had something more exciting to report, but here we are. Everybody needs to eat, and I'm fresh out of ideas.

The rude thing about dinner is that we already did it yesterday. Apparently that doesn't count toward tonight.

What to Make for Dinner? Please Give Me an Actual Answer

There are so many things we could eat, and somehow that makes choosing harder.

Pasta sounds easy, but then I have to decide what goes on it. Rice sounds good, but rice with what? A bowl of rice and my best wishes?

I want something reasonably easy that's also reasonably likely to be eaten by my daughter. That last part adds a little suspense. If you've ever fed a toddler, you know a meal can look perfectly good to you and still earn a review that consists entirely of "No."

No explanation. Just no.

It's a very tough restaurant to work in.

And when I ask the grown-ups what they want, "Whatever" is not the answer I'm hoping for. Whatever is not sold at the grocery store. I've looked.

Please name a food.

The Easy Recipe That Is Actually Easy

Sometimes I go looking for inspiration and find an "easy weeknight dinner" whose ingredient list sends me straight back to the store. Then there's the chopping and the sauce and something that needs to marinate for four hours.

Friends, I'm trying to make dinner tonight.

I need the kind of easy where I read the recipe and think, Yes, I can do that, instead of wondering whether I should have started after breakfast. And please tell me how many things I'll have to wash. That belongs right at the top: "Serves four. Uses every bowl you own."

Thank you. I'll keep looking.

Maybe We Can Have Pasta Again

Somewhere along the way, I decided every dinner needed to be a different answer. I think that's the recovering perfectionist in me, the one who still believes a good mother produces something new and impressive at five-thirty every single night.

Nobody at my table has ever asked for that.

Pasta hasn't offended anyone. Neither have eggs, or a simple rice bowl, or whatever familiar meal takes the least amount of thinking. Repeating something that works isn't a failure of imagination. It's a decision, and I get to make it. I'd just like to remember what those meals are before everyone is hungry.

Including me.

Especially me. Choosing dinner while hungry is a lot like grocery shopping while hungry, except I'm standing in my own kitchen and somehow still tempted to buy everything.

So maybe tonight is the night I finally write the list down, so the next time I wonder what to make for dinner, the answer is already waiting for me in my own handwriting.

The Table Is the Part I'll Remember

I'm standing in a kitchen that isn't quite mine yet, in a house that's still temporary, with a good part of our life waiting in storage. Some nights that lands harder than others.

But when I picture the dinners I'll remember, they aren't the clever ones. They're the ones where the three of us sat down together and somebody laughed with their mouth full. My daughter announced her verdict. My husband reached for seconds. Nobody checked the time.

I used to think home was a place I'd get back to once everything was unpacked. I'm starting to believe it's whatever happens when we sit down together, even over pasta, even in a borrowed kitchen.

Maybe your table has changed, too. A new house, a new season, a chair that's empty or one that's suddenly high enough to need a booster seat. Whatever the dinner is, I think the feeding is the love, and the menu was never really the point.

Moms, What's Your "I've Got Nothing" Dinner?

If you've ever stood at the open fridge around five-thirty hoping it might change its mind, you're in good company. I'm grateful for food to choose from and for the people I get to feed. I'm also very interested in getting through this evening without washing a blender. Both of those are true.

So tell me your easiest dinner. The one you make when you don't know what to make. Nothing fancy, and nothing with an ingredient I'll use once and then keep in the cupboard until we move.

Just a reliable meal that gets everybody fed.

Bonus points if it uses one pan. Extra bonus points if someone else washes that pan.

I don't know what to make for dinner, but apparently I know exactly what I want from the cleanup.

About the Author | Day 285 of 365

I'm a soul-led coach, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist, currently navigating healing, uncertainty, temporary chapters, motherhood, work, big transitions, grief, nervous system healing, overstimulation, emotional growth, and the ongoing lesson that life works a whole lot better when we stop trying to carry everything alone. Today that lesson looked like not knowing what to make for dinner, being perfectly willing to have pasta again, and asking other moms for the easy meals they actually make.

Day 285 of 365. Still showing up. Still grateful. Still accepting dinner ideas—especially if they come with someone who washes the pan. 🐧