My Personal Chef?

When I tell people that I'm the wife of a chef they invariable tell me how lucky I am. They are right - I am incredibly lucky to be hitched to Adam, but their notions that I have a 24/7 personal chef couldn't be further from the truth.
While the Food Network and the producers over at Top Chef edit crews of knife-kit wielding white-coat donned food-flingers as our generation's rock stars, the reality of the restaurant life is anything but glamorous.
Five days a week my guy peels himself out of bed, hits the Caribou Coffee drive-thru for his daily Mocha (they recognize his voice and cue up his order) and is running through his prep list by 10 am. Sounds late to you corporate types? Sure, but he doesn't punch out until 10 pm on a good night. He comes home, wakes me up for a smooch and hits the showers. On the sixth day rest? Think again. That sixth day is Sunday: Adam's dreaded clopening shift (close Sat, open Sun). He's in by 9 at the latest and works a shorty, home by 3 or 4.
This is when his personal chef resume building starts, and I relish our Sunday market trips and the culinary education I receive as I watch him chop, saute, flip, plate and garnish our meals with a well-practiced hand and no sign of a recipe.
Monday is his day off, and after he gets home from the restaurant (yep, at work on his day off. Orders, you know), he generally offers an encore performance, and I learn the finer points of pressing 12-inch high mounds of focccia, peppers, unholy stacks of beef and I'd wager more than my fair share of swiss into near-dainty proportions.
Satiated and leftover laden, my personal chef punches out for the week, and I'm left to fend for myself for the week to come.
While excellent fodder for a break room microwave line, even gourmet leftovers can only take you so far, and by as early as Tuesday night, I'm nosing through the fridge attempting to find something to nosh on. What I find aren't ready-to-micro nibbles. What I've got is ingredients, and I love to play, what can I make with the goodies Adam's culinary ministrations have left behind.

That's where my personal chef story comes to an end for now and where the story of this blog begins. When I post my news of my experimental kitchen successes on facebook, I'm always shocked at the level of response I get - I'm just a lady with a sorta dull chef's knife throwing some veggies in a skillet, and if I can do it, so can you. So if you've got some ingredients and a decent pantry, I hope I can inspire you to skip the drive-thru and the Lean Cuisine and cook something for yourself tonight.