The other day I was thinking about how truly amazing and glamorous it is to be married to a chef… all those fabulous meals he prepares for us at home each night, the romantic date nights visiting local restaurants with friends, our children being exposed to so many different types of food that they happily eat anything we place before them, the wonderful recipes and cookbooks I have access to, never having to pay for a meal when we go out to eat, owning the top of the line cookware and kitchen appliances… the list could go on and on…
But I’ll stop there.
I’ll stop there because it’s not true. There might be some truth behind a few of those statements, but for the most part, for the majority of chefs and their families, they are pure fantasy.
I guess there is a part of me that understands this glamorous life of a chef that has somehow been portrayed to our society as truth. The fact that someone can create something so wonderful out of food, and do so for a large amount of people in a short period of time, is truly amazing. I get that. For some reason there just seems to be something glamorous, intriguing and mysterious about a man (or woman) in a chef coat. (more…)
When I started this blog a few months back, I started scouring the internet to see what other Chefs’ wives or significant others were writing about their lives, with hopes of finding I was not alone. The first blog I came across (because she took the domain name I wanted (just kidding Kerilyn)) was MarriedToAChef.com. It’s been so much fun chatting back and forth across the country with another chef’s wife! Funny how we can live so far apart, never have met in person, but have so much in common immediately!
Today, I’m writing about raising a family with a chef over on MarriedToAChef.com. I’m so excited to have this chance to guest post on Kerilyn Russo’s blog! I hope you’ll take a chance to hop over there and read the post, comment on it, and then take a few minutes to look around her blog. (more…)
For the last few months my husband has been not only the Executive Chef of the restaurant but the interim General Manager. For those of you in the industry, no words are needed to describe the challenges of that. With these added responsibilities his hours and days off have shifted a bit. While the hours have still been CRAZY, he’s been off on Fridays (unheard of!!) and occasionally home in time for dinner.
As I was making dinner the other night he called to say he was about 20 minutes away from home. Yeah! What a nice surprise!
So after a quick glance around the house to make sure there were no piles of laundry on the bed and no toys to trip on, I finished up dinner just in time for us all to sit down as a family and eat! (Fortunately this was an evening where I was not doing breakfast for dinner or random leftovers!)
The meal was not the best part of this surprise. It was what happened after. . . 45 minutes of piano playing and dancing around the playroom as a family. (And just to clarify, it was the kids dancing, not us.) (more…)
Last week was mid-winter break for our kids AND my chef/husband took the week off! I can’t even remember the last time that happened. No email (OK tons of email, but email notifications turned off), only a few texts, 1 voice mail. . . I probably should go into the restaurant and corporate office and personally thank his staff for this. 🙂
So I guess the answer to the question “Do chef’s get vacation time?” is yes.
It’s not always easy to find a good time to take it. For his restaurant, right between Valentine’s Day and the start of Dine Around Seattle was perfect. It also happened to line up with mid-winter break for the girls! Yeah!
So after reflecting on an amazing week as a family, here are 10 things that happened:
1. We had so much fun together as a family!
I was a little nervous about what it would be like to have him home for a week, as there have been many times when things have been awkward, the kids have been strange toward him because they haven’t seen him much, etc. (More on this another time.) But our week was AMAZING!!
