Tool
What's for dinner?
Three questions, then an answer. Not a recipe: the kind of dinner tonight is, which is the part everyone actually gets stuck on.
How long have you actually got?
And how do you feel about cooking?
What is in?
Nobody is grading this. A household that ate is a household that got dinner right, and the plan does not care how.
Common questions
What should I make for dinner tonight?
Decide what kind of dinner it is before deciding what to cook. If you cannot face cooking, assemble rather than cook. If there is nothing in and ten minutes, it is a store cupboard one-pan meal. If you have time, energy and a full fridge, cook double and freeze half.
Why is deciding what to have for dinner so hard?
Because the decision arrives at the worst possible time of day: half past five, tired, with everyone asking. It is not a discipline problem. Every workable meal plan is really a device for moving that one decision to a calmer moment days earlier.
What should I cook when there is no food in the house?
Pasta and something from a tin, which is the entire reason those things live in the cupboard. If you also have no energy for that, toast is a real dinner: eat now, write tomorrow on a list, and stop.