I was standing in the kitchen at 5pm on a Tuesday, staring into an open fridge like it owed me something.

My 5-year-old was doing that thing where he circles the kitchen island like a shark. Not hungry yet, but getting there. My 3-year-old was sitting on the floor pulling every container out of the Tupperware drawer, which was fine actually, because it was buying me time. Except I didn’t know what I was buying time for.

There was chicken in the fridge. I knew that much. I’d bought it two days ago with some vague intention I’d already forgotten. There were vegetables in the crisper, probably still okay. There was pasta in the pantry. There were all the ingredients for dozens of meals, and I could not for the life of me figure out what to do with any of them.

This is a thing that happens to me almost every day. Not every now and then. Not occasionally. Nearly every single day.

I’d later learn there’s a name for it. Executive dysfunction. The inability to start a task even when you want to, even when the task is simple, even when the stakes are low. Your brain just… doesn’t. It sits there like a browser with forty tabs open and none of them loading.

But at the time I didn’t have a name for it. I just thought I was lazy. Or disorganised. Or both. I’d stand there in the kitchen feeling this rising panic while the clock ticked past 5, past 5:15, past 5:30, and the kids got hungrier and louder and I got more frozen. Then I’d crack and order Uber Eats again, and feel that particular flavour of guilt that comes with spending $45 on pad thai you didn’t really want while perfectly good chicken goes grey in the fridge.

My partner never said anything about it. She’s generous like that. But I could feel myself failing at this one basic thing, over and over, and it started to feel like it meant something about me.

I should explain something: I’d been diagnosed with ADHD about a year before this particular Tuesday. I was in my mid-30s. I’d read the books, started medication, done the therapy intake. I understood, intellectually, that my brain worked differently. But understanding it and living inside it are two completely different things. The diagnosis explained a lot. It didn’t fix the chicken situation.

The thing about dinner is that it’s not really one task. It’s like fifteen tasks wearing a trench coat pretending to be one task. You have to decide what to make. Then you have to check if you have the ingredients. Then you have to remember the steps. Then you have to do the steps in order while also managing the timing so everything finishes at roughly the same time. And you have to do all of this while two small humans are competing for your attention and the dog is underfoot because she knows chicken means scraps.

For a brain that struggles with sequencing, working memory, and task initiation, it’s a nightmare. A low-grade, daily, grinding kind of nightmare.

I tried meal planning. I’d spend Sunday afternoon picking recipes, writing a shopping list, buying everything. By Wednesday I’d forgotten the plan existed. The piece of paper was under a pile of mail. The app I’d saved the recipes in had logged me out. I’d stand in the kitchen at 5pm and think, I know I planned something, and then open the fridge and stare anyway.

I tried batch cooking. That worked for about two weekends. The executive function required to cook for four hours on a Sunday is not something I can reliably summon. Some Sundays I could. Most Sundays I couldn’t. And then Monday I’d be back to the fridge and the staring and the guilt.

I tried those meal kit services. They were actually okay, when I remembered to select the meals before the cutoff, and when I remembered to take the box inside before the meat got warm on the porch. So, about 60% of the time. At $80 a week, that’s an expensive 60%.

What I actually needed, I eventually realised, was something much simpler. I didn’t need inspiration. I didn’t need variety. I didn’t need to discover my inner home chef. I just needed someone to tell me what to cook. Tonight. Right now. With what I probably already have. In a way my brain could actually follow at 5pm on a Tuesday when I’m already running on fumes.

That’s a weirdly specific need. And nothing I found quite did it.

So I started building something. Not because I’m a developer by trade (I’m not, really, I just know enough to be dangerous). But because the gap between what existed and what I needed was so clear and so personal that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I called it Just Tell Me What To Cook. The name is the whole idea. You open it, it tells you what to cook, the steps are simple, the ingredients are normal. No preamble, no life story before the recipe, no decisions to make. Just: here, cook this.

It’s not going to win any culinary awards. The meals are basic. But basic is the point. Basic means my kids will eat it. Basic means I can do it at 5pm when my brain is soup. Basic means I actually cook dinner instead of standing in the kitchen for twenty minutes and then ordering Thai food.

I still have bad days. Last Thursday I stood in the kitchen and couldn’t start even with the app open in front of me. That happens. I ordered pizza and nobody died.

But most days, most of the time, I cook dinner now. That’s a small thing that feels like a big thing. Or maybe it’s a big thing that looks like a small thing. I’m not sure which.

Either way, I’m not staring into the fridge as much anymore. And the chicken gets cooked before it goes grey.

Mostly.