In and among the other things I am doing, I have been thinking about dinners almost nonstop. Where an endless list of options should be is a blank space. My brain simply refuses to volunteer any ideas, except on the occasion when it brings to mind the dinner I ate last night. (Frozen pizza is what I ate for dinner last night.)

Dinner is The Worst.

Okay, okay, enough complaining. To be clear, I am in the mood for some fall food. But my current schedule has made it impossible to plan ahead enough to prepare the things that sound good. Like my favorite fall salad, for instance. It seems dumb to buy the ingredients for a salad that will inevitably wilt into unspeakable liquid in my fridge, please do not ask me how I have so readily come up with that image.

What I should be doing is making something in the slow cooker every night. It just feels like I’ve exhausted all my best slow cooker options, though. In the past few weeks, I’ve made chipotle chicken tortilla soup, white chicken chili, balsamic pork, and boeuf bourguignon (which Carla requested! and ate!!!!! and then ate leftovers!!!!!!!!!!!!). All were delicious, all produced copious leftovers.

I need QUICK – like, “can be prepped and ready in 30 minutes max” – and I need EASY – like, “sits in a slow cooker all day and can be scooped onto plates” or “can be plopped onto a sheet pan and shoved in the oven” and I need NOT TACOS because otherwise my husband might excommunicate me.

Let’s see what we can come up with.

DINNERS FOR THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 29

• One Pot Lemon, Basil, Corn & Ricotta Pasta: I don’t know why I’m even listing this here. It sounds delicious, is why. But I already have a robust cons list before I’ve even put a single item in my grocery cart: 1. This is NOT a fall meal. Corn and basil are SUMMER foods. However… I do have a very happy and productive basil plant on my porch, and I think my grocery store still has fresh corn in abundance. So maybe it IS a fall meal. 2. There is no meat in this dinner, which means I have to figure out how to add it in. Probably I’ll turn to a convenience protein, like pre-shredded chicken or a ready-made chicken breast from the prepared foods section. I don’t WANT chicken though, but I guess I could make salmon for myself and Carla. 3. I planned to make this earlier this summer, bought all the ingredients, never made it, and ended up wasting the ricotta. (I do think I made use of the corn and basil.) 4. The recipe was on a list of “easy” dinners, and Teighan claims this dinner is ready in just 30 minutes, but… do I believe that??? 5. Corn silk, all over my kitchen.
• Chili Honey Chicken & Sweet Potatoes:  We haven’t had this in a while. The sweet potatoes make it feel slightly fall-escent. It’s a sheet pan meal, so it meets the “can be plopped onto a sheet pan and shoved into the oven” criterion. But… it does take some prep work. Plus, the cilantro yogurt sauce – which is the star of the show – feels like it requires too much energy. But… maybe I could prep the chicken and potatoes the night before? And do the cilantro yogurt while everything is cooking? This dish IS delicious.
• Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: If I also make this dish, I can have the cilantro yogurt sauce from the previous recipe do double duty. (I prefer it to the tahini sauce listed in the shawarma recipe.) The big downside to this recipe is all the chopping of veggies. Also, I will need some sort of protein for my husband. Maybe a rotisserie chicken could give him one breast for the corn and basil pasta and a second breast for the shawarma? That means I need to make the pasta on Night 3, though, and probably make a stop for the rotisserie chicken on Night 2.
• Cold Noodle Salad with Spicy Peanut Sauce: We haven’t had this in a long while, and it just sounds yummy to me right now. It does not meet two-thirds of my afore-mentioned criteria, though. But it would produce leftovers, which is a plus. I don’t know. This might be a reach.

This is A Very Optimistic List. There’s no way I’m making all of these. Is there a chance that I will make any of them? Or will my husband and I continue to do the thing where one of us asks what’s for dinner and the other says I don’t know and then I end up listing the extremely unappealing contents of our fridge/freezer/pantry? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!