Yup, it's Wednesday night dinner at Scott and Maureen Murphy's modest townhouse in Chesterbrook - and that's how it is every night.

But it wasn't always so.

Scott Murphy was happy to take on the task of making dinner every night after he and Maureen got married. It made sense, since he got home earlier from work.

But soon, he was frustrated: "We were getting in a rut. We were having the same thing every week," he lamented. "By the time you'd get home and try to go through the cookbooks and see something and then realize, 'Oh I don't have that ingredient, or that ingredient.' It wasn't working."

Meanwhile, in the Murphys' house, as in the homes of most avid cooks, recipes from newspapers and magazines were piling up - and so were the cookbooks, hardly used.

So one day last summer, Scott culled the cookbooks and clippings and made a long list of everything he'd like to try.

Falling back on the organization from a career in the military, he entered all the recipes and ingredients onto a computerized spreadsheet. That allowed him to create a carefully organized shopping list, so that he can do a mammoth monthly shopping trip and then fill in with supplemental trips for fresh ingredients.

"This was a way to get a little more variety and to not be sitting in work wondering what I was going to need to make dinner," he said.

Said his wife: "He doesn't know any other way to do it except organized, so he doesn't think it's weird. He thinks it's normal."

(Maureen is not necessarily a reliable judge of normal. She irons her sheets, pillowcases and underwear.)

The couple met in 1996 when they both worked at the American Society for Testing Materials, a professional organization that creates quality-control standards. They were drawn together because they both like to watch the Food Network. It is a second marriage for both; he has three grown children who have made her a grandmother of three by marriage.

He, 60, was an Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam for a year and then finished out a military career mostly at McGuire Air Force Base. Now he runs a continuing education program at the American Society for Testing Materials.

She, 47, has a master's degree in nonprofit management and now works as a fund-raiser for the World Affairs Council.

Scott preps and cooks the entire meal six nights a week, saving time for them to sit and relax with a glass of wine before dinner, and choosing vegetarian meals to please his wife.

Their dinner lists are organized by books such as the Vegetarian Times Cooks Mediterranean and the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook.

So tonight, for example, it's Quinoa and Black Bean Salad. Last night it was BBQ Tofu.

"I don't know if I adapted to the military because I was organized or if the military made me more organized," Scott said. But military pilots are trained to work their cockpits blindfolded and to memorize an exact pattern of procedures "because you don't want to have to think about it in an emergency."

Even the cabinets have order: The sweet spices like cinnamon and cloves are on the top shelf of the spice cabinet; the savory herbs such as basil and oregano are on the middle; many varieties of canned beans are on the lazy Susan cupboard on the left, while the spaghetti and penne are stored on the right.

Since he started the system in July, Scott has made improvements. On the first sheet, he wrote the names of recipes, but neglected to note book and page. The caramelized linguini was noted on the spreadsheet with the code VTM, for Vegetarian Times Cooks Mediterranean.