Pasta is about all I want for dinner. Maybe it’s the season — a little chill in the air, a lot of too much going on — that calls for tender noodles.

Pasta is the easiest one-dish dinner for anyone feeling weary from busy schedules. If you start boiling a pot of water right after you walk in the door, you can eat in half an hour or less.

Work vegetables and proteins into the dish, and you really don’t need anything else to complete the meal, whether it’s cheesy macaroni or soupy soba.

But the real beauty of pasta is that it tastes so special, especially when it’s swirled with fall produce. There’s a real restaurant feel to that kind of dish, but it comes at a fraction of the cost when made at home.

And the very thrill of that is enough to give me a soft second wind to pull noodles out of the pantry and start cooking.