Most weekdays, I cook dinner.

There are exceptions, of course. Some nights Stouffer’s grandma’s rice and chicken comes out of the freezer because, honestly, it’s delicious. Sometimes Pizza Hut or Jimmy John’s gets picked up. Not every evening needs to end with me standing in the kitchen pretending I have unlimited time and energy.

But most Monday through Friday evenings, I cook.

And because apparently cooking dinner wasn’t enough, I also make a menu for the week.

There is actually a surprising amount that goes into deciding what goes on it. I look at the weather, the farm chores, what the kids have going on with school and gymnastics, and how much running around we are going to be doing. A meal that sounds perfectly reasonable on Sunday can suddenly seem like a terrible idea when I realize Tuesday is going to be one of those days.

I also try to make at least one new recipe every week.

That one is always a bit of a gamble. Sometimes we find something that everyone likes and it gets added to the rotation. Other times, we discover that the recipe sounded considerably better on paper.

Those are the meals that get promoted to Bowl of Sadness.

A Bowl of Sadness is not made again.

We don’t revisit it. We don’t convince ourselves that maybe we just did something wrong. We eat it, acknowledge the mistake, and quietly move on with our lives.

Thankfully, there are more successes than Bowls of Sadness.

And then there are the menus themselves.

I like making them, but I apparently cannot make a normal one. I have to give the food ridiculous descriptions, usually with far more drama than the meal deserves. It has become one of those little things I do for the family, and now they expect to see what nonsense I have come up with for the week.

This week’s menu is a pretty good example.

I am already thinking about next week’s.

I’m considering going medieval.

I don’t entirely know what that means yet, but I feel like I have already committed to the idea. There may be feasts. There may be peasants. There will almost certainly be an unnecessarily dramatic description of whatever pork happens to be on the menu.

And honestly, I kind of love that this has become a thing.

Dinner is still just dinner. Some nights it is something I have made a hundred times, some nights it is a new recipe that turns out to be wonderful, and every once in a while it is a Bowl of Sadness that will never see the kitchen again.

But somewhere between the farm chores, the weather, the kids’ schedules, and figuring out what I can realistically make that week, I get to put a little bit of my personality on the refrigerator.

Even if that personality apparently involves declaring a ham sandwich to be a deceased pig.