Every day I try something different.

Once is a decision. Every day is a system, and systems have to be small enough to survive a tired Thursday.

Most households rotate through the same six dinners — not from a failure of imagination but from the sensible economy of a brain that's already spent. Any plan requiring fresh enthusiasm at seven in the evening loses to the pasta, every time.

So make the new thing structural rather than motivational. One unfamiliar recipe on the shopping list, chosen on Saturday when you had energy, cooked on Wednesday when you don't. Novelty lasts best when it was picked by a version of you who wasn't tired.