Our kitchen has one hob ring and we both want to cook at seven. How do we share it without a nightly queue?

I got home with ingredients for a quick dinner and found my flatmate starting a dish that would use our single hob ring for forty minutes. "I got here first," she said. "You had it first yesterday."

Yesterday I'd cooked early because she was out, not because we'd agreed to alternate. We both arrive home around seven on three weekdays, and neither of us wants to spend those evenings waiting beside a pan. We eat different meals and have never agreed to cook for each other.

There isn't room for another appliance. Should we agree who gets the first turn on particular nights, coordinate meals only on the overlapping evenings or each keep one dinner option that doesn't need the hob? I don't want to require her to abandon a dish halfway through. I do want dinner access to be something more reliable than winning the walk through the front door.