Brain-storming ideas for dinner when inspiration is lacking

This was my thought this morning. How to come up with a dinner plan while feeling totally uninspired. I slept poorly and felt like there was nothing but fog between my ears today. Here's how I combat decision fatigue when it comes to putting a meal on the table.

I actually have a couple of starting points and strategies that work for me. When I can't seem to make headway with one method, I skip to the next.

Strategy #1: Use It Up (I start here, as I don't want to waste food.)

• I take a quick inventory of everything that needs to be used up, including the fridge and pantry. Some days I find an about to expire or already expired can of something in the pantry, and I'll use that as a jumping off point. Other days I find fresh produce or cooked meat or grains that have seen better days and should probably be used asap just to "save" it. 
• After discovering a handful of foods, I think about the possibility of using any of them together, hopefully coming up with at least 3 of these "needs using" foods.
• Next I think about the natural seasonings that go well with these foods. Sometimes, the different foods will become different components of the meal, and the likely seasonings aren't used across the board, especially true when planning both the main meal plus dessert. In any case, thinking about natural pairings of seasonings and foods helps me come up with some ideas.

So, for example, if what I have to use soon is leftover cooked chicken, a can of sliced beets past the best by date, some cooked rice that's been in the fridge 4 or 5 days, some leftover pancakes, and a very ripe avocado, I may use the chicken, beets, rice, and avocado, but leave the pancakes for another day or freeze them. I know that we enjoy sage, thyme, and onions with chicken, so I may put together a casserole with the rice and chicken, and those seasonings, maybe making a white sauce or a gravy to bind it all together. However, I have the avocado and beets to consider. I could make an avocado and beet salad. Or I could switch my casserole to a Tex-Mex themed one, mixing chicken, rice, cumin, and chili powder together on the stove, and top the servings with avocado chunks or a quick guacamole if the avocado is too far gone for chunks. I could make a quick marinated beet salad to go on the side.

Strategy #2: Pick Your Poison, I Mean Cuisine

• I begin this technique with considering what types of cuisine we enjoy, and what have we not had for a while. Alternatively, I sometimes consider what cuisine we have had recently, but that we like enough that we'd happily eat it again. For my family, we enjoy Tex-Mex, Italian and Quasi-Italian, Asian of various origins, Curries, All American, and Greek cuisines.
• If I'm repeating a cuisine, I consider whether we have the same or similar ingredients to how we've had that recently. Oftentimes, if we've recently made an Asian stir fry, we still have lots of ingredients that could go into another stir fry. However, instead of a full blown repeat, I brainstorm other ways I could serve those same foods. For example, I may make egg rolls in a bowl, or an Asian-inspired soup with dumplings.
• If I want to make a cuisine that we haven't had recently, I simply pick one of the handful that my family always enjoys. And then I check for ingredients that will fill out a meal in that cuisine. Quasi-Italian is always a popular cuisine in our family, which includes foods like pizza or pasta casseroles. But instead of pizza,. I may make pizza sandwiches, where I use thick slices of sturdy bread topped with usual pizza toppings (cheese, tomato sauce, pepperoni, olives, green peppers), then either topped with a second slice of bread and grilled in a skillet, or leave open-faced for toasted pizza sandwiches.
• Either way, recent cuisine or not so recent cuisine, I brainstorm the easiest way to make something along the lines of the chosen cuisine, hence the pizza sandwiches or egg roll in a bowl.

Strategy #3: Start With Protein

• This technique doesn't require that I look for ready to expire foods or even think how I'll prepare anything, at least not just yet. Instead it simply prompts me to pick the protein for the meal before I consider anything else. Once I have a protein figured out, the rest seems to fall into place.
• I may consider what other proteins we've had recently and choose something different, or I may think of a different method of preparation for that same or similar protein. In any case, after choosing the protein source, I choose a cooking method. If I diced or cubed beef the night before, I may braise and shred tonight's beef. If I made a quiche earlier this week, I may make shirred eggs tonight. 
• Following the protein choice I plan for a carb side and a couple of produce sides -- often one is a fresh fruit side that requires minimal prep.

Strategy #4: The "Pretend We're Getting Take-out" method

• I ask myself, and sometimes all the other members of the household, what restaurant food have we been craving lately? What would we order if we went to XXX restaurant?
• Cravings for us are often for fast food style meals, like burgers and fries, tacos, or submarine sandwiches. Home-cooked versions don't need to be exactly like what a restaurant serves. I try to think of ways I can approximate those restaurant meals using what I have at home and with minimal cooking. If I have potatoes on hand, oven fries are a possibility. Burgers don't need regular burger buns. Hamburgers can be served on toasted bread. If I have the ground beef and some potatoes, I can make burgers and fries at home, adding some fresh fruit and frozen veggies to round out the meal. If we were a plant-based household, we might opt for soft tacos, using seasoned beans as the protein filler in homemade flour tortillas. Add some leafy greens and chopped tomato, and voila, tacos.

Strategy #5: Favorite Type of Meal

• What's your favorite type of meal? Do you prefer salads, casseroles, soups, or sandwiches? Find the basic ingredients to use and salad your meal, or casserole the meal, or soup the meal, or sandwich the meal. Just turn all of what you have into a salad, or casserole, or soup, or sandwich. We've put some pretty crazy things into sandwiches, and everybody has loved them. Ditto on salads. Soup works for an all-in-one-pot meal. Let your favorite type of meal guide the food choices you make.

Strategy #6: The "Whatever" Method

• When we're completely indecisive, I make the executive decision to randomly choose a protein, a starch, a fruit and a vegetable. No real planning goes into coordinating flavors. And "flavor" may simply be butter, salt, and pepper. It works. We are fed. And the clean-up is a breeze.
• This is a last ditch effort to just get us fed a balanced meal. It is really enough to eat this way, even for extended periods. The only risk is boredom with meals. I can attest that this works, as this is how my family ate when I had a young son, newborn twin daughters, and a husband who worked in the city, but we lived in the suburbs. I had no outside help with the kids, and dinner needed to be thrown together in 15 minutes right after my husband returned each night (so he could hold at least one baby). I rotated the different ingredients, so even over many weeks, we were eating balanced. A family favorite quick meal was a piece of buttered and toasted whole grain bread topped with a chopped boiled egg, with frozen peas and orange wedges on the side. It was complete, balanced, and filling. Whatever -- it worked.

I oftentimes combine a couple of these techniques. For tonight's dinner I blended Use It Up with Start With the Protein. I found a head of cabbage that had seen better days in the fridge, After peeling off the bad portions, I had a substantial amount of fresh cabbage to use. I also found a can of pumpkin in the pantry that was nearing its expiry. I had some cooked pinto beans from previous nights this week. I wanted to finish those off soon. Because we'd already had 2 pinto bean meals this week, I wanted to add some beef to the meal for our protein. So I chose a small hunk of beed that I could braise in seasonings and water, then shred. We like salads, and we like Tex-Mex, so I seasoned the beef and beans with onion, garlic, green pepper, cumin, and chili powder, and used sliced fresh cabbage, chopped tomato, and diced avocado for the salad part. I added shredded cheese and a dressing of salsa, mayo, avocado oil, and vinegar to the salads. I used the canned pumpkin in a dessert -- spiced cornstarch pumpkin pudding. We also used up the last of the cornbread from Tuesday's dinner.

As a final note, these aren't recipes, but strategies that I use to help me think of ways to prepare the foods we already have on hand when my mind feels blank. Even on my worst nights, I know that I can overcome the "what on earth should I cook tonight" energy.

Tell me, what strategies do you use to brainstorm the night's meal? Do you have other ways of dealing with decision fatigue or kitchen-focused brain fog?