5 plant-based dinners I rotate when decision fatigue has completely won

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that hits around 6 PM, when you've spent the entire day making decisions and your brain simply refuses to make one more.

What should I eat? becomes the most impossible question in the universe. I know this feeling intimately from my finance days, when I'd come home after twelve hours of high-stakes choices and stand in front of my open refrigerator like it was speaking a foreign language.

These days, my work is gentler, but decision fatigue still finds me. After a long trail run, a deadline crunch, or just one of those weeks where everything demanded my attention, I need dinners that ask nothing of me.

No recipe hunting, no complicated grocery lists, no standing in the kitchen wondering what goes with what. These five meals have become my autopilot rotation, and I'm sharing them because I suspect you might need them too.

1. The big bowl of beans and greens

This is my most frequent fallback, and it's almost embarrassingly simple. I heat up a can of white beans or chickpeas with whatever greens are in the fridge, add a generous pour of olive oil, some garlic if I have the energy to mince it, and finish with lemon juice and salt. That's it. The whole thing takes maybe ten minutes.

What I love about this meal is that it feels like actual food, not like I've given up. The beans provide that satisfying, grounding feeling I need after a depleting day.

Sometimes I'll throw it over leftover rice or toast some bread to go alongside. But honestly? Most nights I just eat it straight from the pot, standing at the counter, and that's perfectly fine.

2. Peanut noodles from whatever's around

I keep a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of soy sauce stocked at all times specifically for this meal. Any noodle works: rice noodles, spaghetti, whatever sad half-box is lurking in the pantry.

While the noodles cook, I whisk peanut butter with soy sauce, a splash of rice vinegar, and some sriracha. Toss it all together, maybe add some shredded cabbage or frozen edamame if they're available.

This dinner reminds me that nourishment doesn't require perfection. Have you ever noticed how we hold ourselves to impossible standards around food, as if every meal needs to be Instagram-worthy? Some nights, tangled peanut noodles eaten on the couch while watching something mindless is exactly the self-care you need.

3. Sheet pan roasted vegetables with hummus

When I have slightly more energy but still zero desire to think, I chop whatever vegetables are in the crisper drawer, toss them with olive oil and salt, and roast them at 425 degrees until they're caramelized and tender. Serve with store-bought hummus and warm pita. Done.

The beauty of this meal is its flexibility. Broccoli, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, zucchini, bell peppers: they all work. I don't measure anything or follow a recipe.

I just cut things into roughly similar sizes and let the oven do the work. Marcus and I often eat this dinner in comfortable silence, both of us too tired for conversation but grateful for something warm and simple.

4. Avocado toast, but make it dinner

Yes, avocado toast counts as dinner. I will die on this hill. When decision fatigue has truly won, I toast good bread, mash an avocado on top with salt and red pepper flakes, and call it a meal. Sometimes I add cherry tomatoes or a sprinkle of everything bagel seasoning. Sometimes I don't.

I spent years believing that dinner had to be a proper production, something with multiple components and a protein and a vegetable and a starch. That belief came from the same place as my old conviction that success meant working eighty-hour weeks.

Both were lies I had to unlearn. What matters is that you eat something that makes your body feel okay. Avocado toast absolutely qualifies.

5. The freezer rescue bowl

This is less a recipe and more a strategy. I keep my freezer stocked with emergency supplies: frozen rice, edamame, vegetable dumplings, veggie burgers.

On the worst decision fatigue nights, I assemble a bowl from whatever's in there. Microwaved rice, heated edamame, a veggie burger crumbled on top, drizzled with whatever sauce is in the fridge door.

Is it elegant? Absolutely not. But it's food, and it's reasonably nutritious, and it required almost no thinking. Sometimes that's the victory. What would it mean for you to lower the bar on dinner, just occasionally, and trust that good enough really is good enough?

Final thoughts

These five dinners have gotten me through deadline weeks, grief, illness, and ordinary exhaustion more times than I can count. They're not fancy, and they won't impress anyone at a dinner party.

But they've taught me something important: taking care of yourself doesn't always look like elaborate self-care rituals. Sometimes it looks like heating up a can of beans and eating them with a spoon.

If you're reading this after a long day, wondering what to make for dinner, I hope you'll give yourself permission to keep it simple tonight. Your only job is to eat something. Everything else is optional.