The price of home-cooked meals

All of this arose because on a Friday when my husband was supposed to cook... he decided that having a meeting was important, and I... decided that going to get my gray hairs touched up at DNFLY, respecting our agreement that he would cook on Fridays, was the best option.

I simply arrived home at 2:00 pm, lunchtime/dinner time in my household; and obviously, not a single ingredient had even made an appearance in our kitchen. I don't blame my partner, as he is a man trying to climb the corporate ladder in the US, with a tight schedule, and had been working late the night before.

However, our two hungry daughters wouldn't understand these issues; one a dancer on the verge of diabetes and the other an athlete with a light allergy. Many will say that my glamour and beauty have led my family to this situation. Seeing it that way would label you as one of those nefarious "thought defenders" who prioritize relegating women to household chores. But then: who should do this work in a middle-class expatriate family in the American suburbs? These are the factors that contribute to our laziness when it comes to cooking:

1. The average successful person with an 8-hour job, travel, and stress doesn't have enough time to dedicate more than an average of 30 minutes a day to each meal and 5 minutes for snacks.

2. The average time a home-cooked meal takes is 1 to 2 hours (even if you have a Crock-Pot, Cuisinart, or Thermomix). This doesn't include the time spent going to buy the ingredients at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, washing the Pottery Barn dishes in the dishwasher, and cleaning the granite island after each meal. 3. We don't have the variety of fresh foods like Mexican squash, huitlacoche, or fresh epazote (or we don't know how to translate them) that exist in our culture of origin, and which we are used to cooking with (although, to be honest, we don't cook much even when we're in our home country).

4. And most importantly, nobody pays you to cook and eat well. Even though, in terms of health, this is a crucial issue.

Perhaps I'm speaking from a place of privilege, as some call it, however, doing the math on the points mentioned above, the cost of just two hours of time for a couple of expatriate professionals where the woman doesn't work would be equivalent to $140 USD per day, which could easily pay for an hour of a private chef at $28 USD, according to my Google search. So why are women who work at home still the most reliable option for our husbands?

Lack of advertising for private chefs, job insecurity, cross-contamination, modern slavery, misallocation of resources. Can anyone help me answer this question?

Finally, if you still have any doubts, yes, I ended up cooking, some delicious meatballs with spaghetti, much to the dismay of my daughters, who were already savoring a cheese pizza in their minds... which meant we didn't starve today.

Sincerely,