Rent A Chef For Cooking Relief

Are you so sick of slaving over a hot stove you could scream?

The “cooking co-op” idea described in today’s cover story isn’t the only way to feed your family home-cooked meals without all the work.

Personal chef services, a growing trend around the country, are starting to catch on in Spokane. You pick out your menu and your personal chef does the shopping, comes into your kitchen while you’re away and cooks enough meals to last a week or two.

Oh, and they clean up after themselves, too.

“You wouldn’t even know I had been there, except your freezer is stocked full of food,” says Lisa Griffin, who started her Savor Thyme chef service last spring.

Sue Smith launched a second Spokane personal chef service, What’s Cookin’?, three months ago.

“The worst part of cooking is having to think up what to make, and then go shopping,” she says.

Smith charges a flat fee of $250 for five nights’ worth of entrees for four people, or 10 nights’ worth for two people. Griffin works out individual fee schedules with each customer, which can run as low as $8 per person per meal, depending on ingredients.

For more information, call Smith at 921-1266 or Griffin at 458-2983.

Fast food

If you’d still rather go it alone in the kitchen, but with a little less stress, maybe Cori Kirkpatrick can help.

The Seattle writer and busy mom explains her personal system for efficient meal planning, shopping and cooking in “The Weekly Feeder” (Starburst Publishers, $16.95).

The 233-page paperback includes pantry checklists for staple items, preplanned weekly grocery lists and eight weeks’ worth of dinner menus and recipes.

Ask for it at bookstores, or visit www.starburstpublishers.com.

Pigskinny dipping

Finally, a few fun facts in honor of Super Bowl Sunday, courtesy of the Snack Food Association, The National Potato Promotion Board and the Dairy Farmers of Washington:

* Americans consumed more than 30.4 million pounds of snack foods while watching last year’s contest, including 11.3 million pounds of potato chips, 8.5 million pounds of tortilla chips, 4.1 million pounds of pretzels, 3.8 million pounds of popcorn and 2.7 million pounds of nuts.

* Among regional favorites, fans in the Southeast prefer pork rinds, Southwesterners stick to tortilla chips and those in the Pacific crave meat snacks such as beef jerky.

* Super Bowl weekend is No. 1 nationwide for sales of cheese. Have a Gouda game!