My name is Jennifer and I have been married to a chef for 25 years.

I blog about my life as a chef wife and how we combine restaurant and family life each day.

If you are new to my site, start here.

Recent Posts:

Sneaking in Family Time

0 Comments

The traditional school calendar and the schedule of a chef do not emulsify AT ALL!! (Sorry I couldn’t resist the “emulsify” comment.)

While my chef/husband and I had a very nice date during the school day on Wednesday, he hasn’t been able to see the girls much at all because they’ve been in school for most of the day when he’s been off. 🙁

We have to sneak in family time any time we can get it.

Little requests like, “Daddy, can you walk us to the bus stop this morning?” are a big deal at our house, because it’s time with just Daddy.

Let me share what our house was like Wednesday morning before school. (Keep in mind the girls had not seen my chef/husband much the past few days.) We were all up and partially awake. Two out of the three kids felt something was terribly wrong and were concerned they could not go to school and needed to stay home. This left my husband and I to figure out if there truly was something wrong or if they were still waking up and just really wanted to stay home because Daddy was home. It was a rough morning all the way through breakfast. read more…

17 Things I’ve Learned From Being Married to a Chef

0 Comments

Everyone eats.

Not everyone cooks.

Some people enjoy cooking and do it well.

Others cook only because they need to eat. If there’s a fast and easy way to do it, they will find it.

I love to eat (unfortunately.) But when it comes to cooking . . . let’s just say it’s not my all-time favorite thing to do.

Fortunately, I’m married to a chef. read more…

Cooking for your Family and Friends on your Day Off

4 Comments

Depending on which chef or chef wife you ask, you’ll get a different answer to the question, “Does a chef cook at home?”

In our family, my husband does tend to cook some on his days off. It’s usually the meal I’ve planned. He just makes it taste better than I would. Plus, if he’s just sitting there while I’m cooking, I think I make him nervous. (The other day as I was cutting something and he asked, “Are you OK over there?” I was fine, but apparently he was concerned for the safety of my fingers. LOL!! He got up and finished the cutting job.)

Yesterday was no different . . . well maybe just a little. He had the day off of work and we celebrated my 40th birthday with family and friends (6 weeks late.) Just a simple BBQ menu – BBQ pork sliders, coleslaw, beans, potato salad, cornbread and apple crisp with salted caramel ice cream.

To me, this looked like a ton of food (and of course we had enough to feed everyone there that night and then again tonight if they all were to come back.) But my chef/husband’s comment to me was how easy it was compared to the quantity of food he helped prepare at work on Saturday. read more…

Family Menu Tasting

2 Comments

For the past couple months, my chef/husband has been working on menu development for a couple other restaurants in his company. (This has been on top of his Executive Chef position . . . hmmmm . . .)

So the other day after the girls got off the bus, my husband tells us that one of the restaurants is rolling our part of the new menu that evening and asks us if we wanted to go try it.

The first response from our 9 year old – “Do we get to get dressed up in fancy dresses?”

She’s only 9. We’re in trouble.

Sure why not.

Like I’ve said before, we don’t go out to eat very often. And this evening would definitely feel like work for my chef/husband since it was his recipes we’d be eating.

But feeling like work or not, he suggested it so we were going.

All you have to do is mention going out to eat at a restaurant where Daddy has something to do with the food and the girls are excited!

15 minutes later, 3 girls in fancy dresses with cute hair and Mom and Dad in jeans and shorts (we like to be comfortable) piled in the car and off we went to dinner. read more…

Am I Ignoring Chef-Husbands and Female Chefs?

0 Comments

Chef-husbands (aka husbands of a chef) and female chefs, I want you to know I think about you every time I write a post.

I write about combining restaurant and family life. I blog about our family’s journey as we try and accomplish this.

In our family my husband is the chef, so when I write, I refer to a chef as a “he.” I know there are many female chefs. Please don’t think I’m ignoring you or thinking you are not important! It’s just really awkward to read he/she all the time in a blog post. So I default to “he” for chef because my husband is a “he”. Please don’t take it personally. 🙂 read more…