Personal Chef (from local collage student)

I wanted to share something that has worked out very well for our family in the past.

We had a local CSU student be our personal chef - plus my cooking teacher.

You can post an ad on the student emplyoment site (http://ses.colostate.edu/) and here's what I did. I put a bit of information on
- my son's allergy,
- how we are needing someone who is aware and can accomodate food allergies,
- my needs of wanting someone who can teach me how to cook
- take care of the cleanup part as well.

My kids were small enough that they'd rather have me be with them and having someone else do the cooking, rather than a babysitter watch them while I cook - well, cooking is NOT my strength, and perhaps having an international background was a helpful excuse to say TEACH ME!. I got at least 9 responses, and have settled to one guy for now. He loves cooking (a business major), loves experimenting with food, etc. Some other reponses were from students who has celiac or food allergies themselves, or who have a friend/family who has them, or some studying to become dietician, saying this will be great learning experience for them.

Here's a flow of what happens:
- J (the guy's initial) would send me in a couple of recipi ideas in advance,
- I get to choose which ones to cook,
- he then sends back ingredients list,
- either I or he picks up the needed stuff from grocery stores (if we don't have them at home),
- the cooking day, he comes over later in the afternoon, does cooking demonstration while I assist (like chopping, cleaning),
- when it's all done he packs his own portion to take back,
- the rest would be served on a plate or kept wrapped in foils etc till we eat,
- we clean up the kitchen, and
- then he gets paid ($15 first hour, $10 for the next, plus grocery), and takes off.

He would often stay up to 2 hours, we pay him $25, which is in our case $5/person (with some left overs for the next day). If I am to do this again, I'd certainly make doublt batch so we could store up the rest for later days.