The Ruffled Apron

Coming soon, to a kitchen near you! VERY near you. Your own kitchen, in fact! Today I had a meeting with my near "personal chef," Caitlyn Manning, who is just getting her new business, "The Ruffled Apron," on its feet. I think I'm her second "regular" client, and I am sooooo excited for this to begin.

















Here's Caitlyn and Claire at our 50s dinner club a couple of years ago.. making mashed potatoes and meat loaf in style! Hi honey, I'm home!


Here's how it works, at least in my case. (She can design her service to fit your needs.) Every Friday she will email me my menu choices (based on the extensive interview/survey she did with me today) for the following week. On Monday morning she will do the grocery shopping (YES!) and then bring the food to my kitchen and prepare three meals for us, each of which will serve 4. (Yeah, there are only 2 of us, but we can either have leftovers or company.) She'll put two of them in my freezer with instructions for how to heat them up later in the week, and one will go in the fridge for the first night. Salad ingredients, chopped up and ready to mix together, along with her homemade salad dressings, will be in the fridge.

She's also going to chop up a big container of fresh fruit that we'll eat on during the week.


Since we're Orthodox Christians and we fast from meat and dairy on Wednesdays and Fridays, she's going to include one fast-friendly meal into the mix. (During longer periods of fasting, she'll cook all fast-friendly meals for us.)

I can hear the nay-sayers in the background: What about personal choices for foods? She covered that in the interview. What about health issues? Covered--she's going to focus on low fat ingredients as much as possible, at my request. What if I dont like something? I'll tell her and she won't fix it again. Duh. Or she'll adjust it if it's too spicy, etc.

So, what am I going to be doing since I won't be cooking much, um, possibly ever. (Did I mention that I really really don't like to cook?) Here's the plan:

Mondays through Fridays: 3-5 hours/day WRITING (probably at the library on my new MacBook Pro, which I love); 45min to one hour/day exercise (on new elliptical machine, which I also love); 2 hours/day for everything else, you know, like laundry, errands, paperwork, email, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and the occasional coffee or lunch with a friend. In other words, I'm headed into serious writing mode beginning the first week in August.

Weekends: More time to exercise, work on projects around the house, and hang out with my hubby and friends. And when I'm out of town, hubby will have healthy meals ready to warm up and enjoy. Hopefully, we'll be eating out less... I'd like to recover the joy of eating out as a treat, and not something you do just because you don't like to cook!

The only thing that could mess up my plan? I've been called to jury duty (first time ever)... I have to appear on July 30, to choose dates I'd be available to serve, I think. We'll see how that fits with the new plan. One way or another, delicious, healthy meals from the Ruffled Apron lady will be such a treat!

Watch for a blog post with photos of Caitlyn cooking in my kitchen on August 3. If you're interested in her service, let me know (leave a comment or send me an email) and I'll send you her contact info. Her blog doesn't have her Ruffled Apron info up yet, but she's working on it. (She's also on Facebook.)

Mmmmmm! I can smell the aroma now! I'm off to Denver to spend a week with my new granddaughter, Grace Malia, and my son, Jason, and his wife, See, tomorrow! And yes, I'll be cooking a bit while I'm there, but it won't be of the same quality as the Ruffled Apron. Anyway, See's on a special diet for 30 days post partum, but Jason will probably enjoy some good old Southern pot roast, etc. I can handle that. He also mentioned recently that he's missing ribs.... but I don't cook ribs. Seems like there's an ap for that.... hogsfly.com or something?