Hillsborough woman runs catering business for active families
By:Lauren Campbell
Not many people can say they get paid for doing what they enjoy, but Bessie Doty can.
A Hillsborough resident for 25 years, Ms. Doty started Dinner Thyme Delites, a personal chef service, in September. Ms. Doty goes to her clients’ homes and cooks up dinners. She can prepare a week’s supply or more.
"I could cook from 6 o’clock in the morning till midnight and never get tired of it," she says. "If you love to cook and are organized, you can do this."
Ms. Doty trained as a personal chef through the U.S. Personal Chef Association. She also is a certified food handler. All the association’s 900 recipes are tested to make sure they hold up to re-heating.
"You know they’re going to work well and taste good," she says.
Ms. Doty’s favorite menu items are pork roast with honey and apples and wrapped veal, stuffed with herbs, sliced and served cold with beans. It may sound gourmet when you’re used to burgers and macaroni and cheese, but Ms. Doty says it’s not.
"It’s good home cooking, not fancy-smancy food," she says.
Ms. Doty surveys her clients to learn their likes and dislikes and then suggests recipes. She enters the menu items into a computer program that generates a shopping list.
But Ms. Doty doesn’t just cook the meals. She also shops for the food, packages the meals, labels them with re-heating instructions, stores them in the refrigerator or freezer and cleans up the kitchen before she leaves. She brings all her own equipment – pots, pans, knives – which she stores in her van, her kitchen on wheels.
Her meals are organic, and are prepared with vegetables and fruits grown without pesticides and herbicides, and with meats, poultry and dairy products without hormones and antibiotics. Ms. Doty often stops at several stores to find the ingredients she needs before going to a client’s house to cook.
Everything is made from scratch, except for the ketchup, but she uses an organic brand. Ms. Doty says it’s important for her to use wholesome, natural ingredients without preservatives and chemicals in her cooking.
"I wouldn’t cook that way (with preservatives and chemicals) for my own family so I’m not going to cook like that for someone else," she says. Ms. Doty always has cooked for her six daughters. Her daughter Michele is now a customer. Michele needs some help with dinner since she’s pregnant with her second child.
Ms. Doty says the chef service is ideal for people who don’t have time to cook.
"People feel that their time is important," she says.
It may sound like an unattainable luxury, yet hiring Ms. Doty to cook your dinners costs $16.25 a meal, or $325 for 20 meals – enough to last a couple two weeks. Twenty meals for individual children younger than 10 cost $50, for children 10 and older, the cost is $100.
Ms. Doty also works as a business consultant for a chemical company in Bridgewater, but she always has loved to cook. Many people have suggested she cook for a living, but she did not take the idea seriously until recently.
About three years ago she spotted an ad in a magazine about training as a personal chef and thought that was what she really wanted to do. Yet she put the ad aside until one day her husband Warren told her to "just do it," and she did.
Ms. Doty is queen of the kitchen in her own home as well. When she went away on vacation with some friends she prepared meals for her husband and put them in the freezer so he wouldn’t have to cook.
"Warren makes the best coffee in the land and a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, but that’s it," she says. He does help her with cleaning though.
"I don’t like to clean or do the wash," she says.
When Ms. Doty isn’t cooking, she enjoys spending time with her six grandchildren and watching old movies.