Living on a ship, not so much. But if I could afford a full time chef, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat. There are meal delivery services in some places but not in my neck of the woods. I'd even be down for that. If it wasn't so resource wasteful, I'd eat out from grocery delis a couple times a week or some of the nicer frozen dinners . . . but alas. I have said it a few times on the forum, I only cook because I love to eat good food, not the process of cooking.

On the downside, one of the main complaints I hear from folks in assisted living facilities with dining rooms is the food isn't very good. I have eaten at such places twice as a guest of someone living there, and in both cases the food was pretty good. A light salad lunch and stuffed shells were the items I had. But I also hear that the food varies because good quality is expensive and hard to maintain. So I know of a few places that started out good and went downhill as cost cutting measures were implemented. Sort of a trend in many realms now. That would be the trouble with having a personal chef, finding and keeping someone good!

I don't cook when we travel, and I do enjoy eating out, especially in places like Italy and Fiji. We had great seafood every day in Fiji, and I would like to eat seafood every day, if it weren't so expensive. The hotel where we stayed in Florence had a great breakfast buffet, and I like the convenience of that.

When I had my appendix removed at a hospital in Sonoma, I had great food there, and the hospital also had a good wine list.

I've never been on a cruise that lasted more than a day, and so I've never slept on a ship. That really does not appeal to me.

I do enjoy eating out occasionally but would not be happy if I stoped cooking/baking. I've loved it for as long as I can remember.

I always said that if money were no object I'd love a personal chef and shopper. The chef to make me eat healthier meals and the shopper because I despise with a passion clothes shopping.

My ex was one who always critiqued what I made. He'd stand beside me and say I'd have done that, do it this way etc. He did that 3 times and I told him he could do all the cooking, and he did.

I lost a lot of ability when I got on my own but quickly got it back when I started cooking for Tom. And what a joy.......he loved and always complimented my meals.

I would miss it if I couldn't cook again.

My friend often complains on the amount of chopping it takes to make some (simple) dishes, whereas I enjoy chopping :)

Good luck finding a private chef who makes food that you like! Good luck finding one who even knows how to cook! You can get restaurant trained cooks who can make restaurant style meals according to restaurant recipes--and who don't really know the "every housewife knows" kind of stuff that we share with those who randomly pop in here with questions. I've had to deal with this for some elderly friends. There are some come by a few times a week type private chefs who are more like caterers. They're better cooks than the full time home cook type, and not so narrow as the restaurant trained. They're more expensive, and what you get is a few days worth of food in plastic catering boxes with instructions for warming and serving. I.e., high price, decent quality leftovers.

I think, given the unlimited funds and the question, that I'd rather have a sous chef. Someone to do some of the schlepping and chopping and clean up and all that work that isn't always fun, but retain the "boss" chef position for myself. :)

If it were an alternative to a regular senior "home", however, and I had to go someplace, I think I could do the hotel penthouse, so long as the cooks made what I'd be willing to eat, or at least a good "spa" menu (adjusted for allergies) and I had sandwich supplies and other outside food available as well. I can believe a top hotel kitchen could produce food I'd accept--hotel or no, I'll only believe in the existence of a passable private chef (who also isn't eagerly trying to find a new and better gig), when you show me. I could not do the ship thing, never mind the food. I get it that you get to see new things, but all that water and mold...no thank-you!

No. I wouldn't like that. I would rather pay for someone to clean up the mess I made while cooking even though that is not a huge deal either........ Come to think of it I dont want some stranger touching my pink kitchen stuff. MINE! Grrrrrrr!!! Go away ill clean it myself! Back!

I enjoyed the meals on the cruise we went on okay but they were not memorable. We didn't starve. Also, I did not really like the time constraints. It is not unheard of in my house to get up and cook a bacon cheeseburger and fries at 1 am,or to start to cook a pot roast at 10 pm. Or a bowl of rice and gravy at 6 am. I would feel horribly guilty and scared to eat the food if I demanded it of hired help at such odd hours.

So if I had unlimited funds, i would buy more pink kitchen equipment and use it myself.

I still get way too much "good" from growing, cooking and eating good food (or serving it to loved ones). Plllog even the slicing and dicing! If I have time to do that, it means I have time to sloooow down and really get into the process. It's sort of meditative. Ditto for gardening...maybe some day I will have to give up cooking, but only when my hands are so arthritic that they can't safely handle a knife. If I won the lottery I'd pay folks to clean the house, do the shopping, maybe even a "sous gardener" to do the lawn-mowing, the compost chopping, etc. But not to do the cooking.

Re the dicing, I'm thinking of when the whole family could get together. Dicing roots for three dozen is a long and exhausting chore. Recently, I've had a minion shortage, though we haven't been having sit downs either. I can see wanting a paid minion or two when I'm older, since my minions don't seem to be growing replacement minions. :)

That's a hard one! DH does the grilling about 5-6 months of the year, so I get some reprieve there, but I love my wintertime cooking. Soups, stews, casseroles that I put a healthy tweak on.

IF I could get a cook that could make healthy, low sodium, low carb, tasty meals, I might go for it.

For the time being, I'm still fine with cooking most of the time. We usually only eat 1 meal a week "out". That is a take out that we can bring home and heat up later.

I remember that, DC!!! Here's to a holiday in Paris, everyone!!

If I won the lottery I’d probably eat out as much as I do now (occasionally, or more when i’m on holidays) but I would hire a cleaner and a gardener.

I hate not being able to cook....I cook on vacations, much prefer to rent a condo than a hotel. Took a long cruise one time. The food was lovely....but I was thankful for being able to have at least fruit and juice in our stateroom.

I love eating at a nice restaurant, but hate when the meal isn't nearly as good as I make.

“I love eating at a nice restaurant, but hate when the meal isn't nearly as good as I make.” Me too, Linda. Mostly I order things I wouldn’t cook myself, like specific ethnic foods etc.

(Funny story- I stole the idea for a chicken with pesto sauce dish from a restaurant and served it fairly regularly, still do. When DD was dating her now husband, her now in-laws took the pair of them to dinner at that restaurant. DD had the chicken with pesto sauce. When the waiter was clearing, he asked if she had enjoyed it. She replied, ”It was nice, but I like my Mom’s version better.” :-D)

We also usually stay in holiday cottages and haunt the local markets for inspiration for things to cook.

I’ve just remembered I recently read that the Duchess of Cambridge cooks for her family. William jokes that this is why he is thin 😂

They could definitely afford a chef if they wanted one.

When we'd holiday and ate out regularly I couldn't wait to come home and do some of my own cooking. We missed it, and that's something that I'd miss on a regular basis.

LOL Colleen with William's comment.

I could live that way with the inclusion of my old family favorite recipes followed to a T.

Hmm, no. I would hire a personal assistant that takes care of household needs. Organize a cleaning sevice that zips in invisible. A fridge stocked with my personal requests. Maybe a few meals a week but without anyone underfoot.

Privacy can be so invasive with household help at every turn.

A personal assistant, paid well, can foil all conflicts.

I lived that life in my early twenties with a very wealthy Italian. His butler, Aldo, was very good at his job. Enrico had many jets and planes and we flew all over. Aldo was the perfectly trained butler. (we did come home a day early from a Portofino trip and he met us at the door wearing only his bow-tie, naked, expecting his lover)...lol.

I ran into my Rome Italy roomate in Guatemala and she broke the news that Enrico perished in one of his planes returning from the CanesFilmFestival. The plane split in a storm, ---the dozen left behind on the runway survived. Enrico and his piot hit the wall.

I've spent time/days in 50 million dollar homes since. Not comfortable passing the laundry room where two spend their day. So many home employees everywhere running around. I do not want a household of non family members. Ick.

A gardener, a good cleaning service---i'm good.

We rented a beach home in Mexico for a few years. Loved the home but it came with a cook, a cleaner and a gardener. We had three people all over our privacy all day long for two weeks. The gardener did nothing but give us a lime from a tree. He was in and out of the home all-day-long for no reason. No privacy so i would want, with sudden wealth, privacy first. Be invisible whatever it takes. Clean up my crap and split.

When i was a little girl, my mother taught me to never order a steak out, because "your daddy makes them so much better". So for many many years my favorite meal "out" was deep fried scallops, and in those days it was cheap! Then for many years my favorite meal at our Country Club was what I called "Junk food fish"...it was a piece of cod, a couple of shrimp, a couple of oysters, a couple of small scallops, a slipper lobster tail all deep fried. Yummy!

Well, since I asked the question, I might as well throw in my two-cents...

I've long said that if I won the lottery, the FIRST thing I would acquire be would be a chauffeur. To never have to sit in the driver's seat again would be as close to heaven as I expect to get. Even a Jersey boy gets sick of the highway.

As far as cooking goes, I started cooking when I was eight-years-old. Since then, I've done 99% of the cooking for multiple girlfriends, two wives, and one daughter. That was a total of 57 years. It's only in the past two-and-a-half years that I'm living with someone who splits the chores evenly with me. (Now that's heaven!)

So, once I've hired a chauffeur for life, my next goal would be to consider an on-call chef. If I rolled out of bed in the morning and wanted my chef to prepare dinner that night, all I'd have to do is call and either give the chef a menu or be surprised. This would still give me or Carol the ability to cook if we wanted to, go out to a restaurant (driven by my chauffeur) if that was our desire, or call for delivery.

Being half Jewish and half Sicilian, cooking is in my genes. Maybe in my next life it will be different. Ah, the possibilities...

I had one very wealthy friend in Mexico City that I used to visit every year (until he moved to Los Angeles), and he had a full staff of servants, including maid, gardener, cook, driver, etc., and the cook served us excellent meals all the time. At one time, he bought a French cookbook and translated the recipes into Spanish so that his cook could make them, and she did a great job on this.

The one drawback to having servants was having to wait for them to do something. I had a phone in my room, and I could call the servants if I wanted something, and I had to get up early each morning to order breakfast. The cook would then go to the market to buy whatever she needed for what I ordered, and so it took a couple of hours to get breakfast. Therefore I would always order it two hours before I wanted it. If I wanted a glass of lemonade, the cook would go to the yard (or the market) for lemons, make the lemonade, and then one of the servants would serve it to me in a crystal decanter on a silver platter with an Irish linen napkin. After a while, I did get used to this, however, and my friend told me that I was very good with the servants - probably because I was so patient. He said a lot of Americans did not know how to treat servants, but my family has always had hired help, and so I was reasonably familiar with it.

I am not a control freak, and I do not feel that I have to do everything myself or that no one else can do it as well as I do. If I want something a particular from someone, I can also give them the instructions or directions to make it the way I want. I like the variations I get when someone else cooks for me.

My brother does most of the driving, and so I drive very little these days, now that I am retired. I never really enjoyed driving, although it is more pleasant in Palm Springs than in Los Angeles. In Cathedral City, there is no traffic at all and only minor traffic in Palm Springs.

My last boss had a chauffeur, but that was partly because she liked to work while she was in the car. She would sent faxes to me in the 1990s while she was on a plane. I've never been that compulsive about working.

I sort of thought maybe practically something I could get with a lot of money might be a sous chef, but probably not any easier to find a good one of those than a good personal chef.

Ricky I would hope most marriages/relationships are fairly evenly divided with chores. I did the cooking so hubby offered to do the cleaning up. He also loved vacuuming and ironing, of all things. He also made the bed, even when we both got up at the same time. He'd come down the hall and comment that he and Roxie (one of our cats) helped him change the bedding. 🙂

Jasdip, that's the way it's supposed to work. Neither of my two marriages were anything like that. Carol and I are equal partners in every aspect. Like they say, the third time is the charm.

I take it back about the chopping. After several hours of chop chop chopping, my ankle hurts and I'm sleepy (though the latter might be the storm blowing by).

Right now, I could see sitting in the kitchen giving orders to the cook. I still have to sauté, mix and bake. I'm having a nice break. I need a nap....

Pllog, you just need a bar stool to sit on while you’re chopping. Or do it at the table. 😁

I’ve done that when my back or feet were giving me gyp.

To illustrate my above point, its almost midnight here. What am I doing? Making meatloaf of course. With potatoes roasted along with it. SO will be home in an hour or so and we have no eaten since 5am. I wouldn't want someone in my kitchen at midnight.....

Into the oven!

Yes, definitely a personal chef to act as sous-chef and then someone to handle cleanup and service. When one was too busy or didn't feel like directing the meal, just turn over the reigns.

LOL! Colleen, I have my grandmother's Cosco stool with the built in steps and there are chairs and a table surface in front of a little TV as well. I actually do prefer standing at the prep area, however, which is a pivot-step to the clean-up sink, and the same the other way to the stove, with fridge drawers right where I stand (on a beautiful GelPro mat). I designed it myself and it's perfect for me! If I'm doing something fiddly, like trimming artichokes (though they're not so painful nowadays and I don't bother for home use), pitting cherries, etc., I'll sit in front of the TV. For regular chopping, I much prefer standing where I can use shoulder strength instead of hand strength. But you're right that I could sit down if I thought of it.... I actually had a minion around during chopping today who I thought would be useful--and who didn't even take out the compost bits! A very chatty minion....

Ricky -- you and me both! How wonderful it would be to have a chauffer. I can't wait until self-driving cars become a reality for the masses. I could sit in the back-seat and fix my hair and do my makeup during the hour drive to work, or nap on long car rides. And we won't lose our independence when we're too old to safely drive anymore.

Anyway, DH is a chef, and I must say it IS nice when he cooks dinner on his day off. I love to cook, though, so maybe having a chef on call when I don't feel like it or I'm too busy -- best of both worlds (alas, DH is not at my beck and call... LOL!)

No way. Part of the reason for my retirement from the commercial food world was to have more time to work on it at home- both in the gardens and the kitchen. I keep my larder stocked as I please and have the time to create with it. Also have the time to work the gardens :) I'm very into food from seed to eat and everything in between.

I wold drop a lot of money on upgrading my kitchen into commercial home kitchen, and building in a commercial home summer and field kitchen in one of the outbuildings. Probably a brewing and fermenting build in as well. Have the entire gardenyard installed with it's feed tank beds, greenhouses, and irrigation all at once. Get the alt energy bank, back wells and tanks, and field buildings done. Have others to the majority of the build work instead of doing it myself. Some fun yard and garden toys :)

Then I would get a handyman/garden assistant to take care of all the regular little fix it chores and regular yard work around the property. And a cleaning service to do my bathrooms.

Well, I don't really mind cooking if I have a nice kitchen to cook in. So, if I won the lotto, I'd definitely either move to a better house or remodel the kitchen in this house to be a much more functioning kitchen. So, the answer is NO I wouldn't be able to go without ever cooking. I really don't think I would want anyone in my house cooking my meals for me either. I have a fear of the day when I'm too old to take care of myself...UGH!

"Never to cook again? Could you do it?"

I'd sure be willing to give it a try!

I am living that never-cook-again life and I hate it! My tremors from Parkinson's have progressed to the point I can't use any tools. Trust me, you don't want me to hold a knife. I miss the things I use to cook or bake. I was never a fancy gourmet cook but I could make a wide range of meals. I liked to make other country's recipes.

DH has taken over and to him food is fuel and nothing more. We eat a lot of pasta and sauce, burgers & fries, corn dogs & mac and cheese, sausage and noodles, pizza, Costco chicken, steak, and baked pork chop. Repeat every week. He has a Masters degree in engineering and could follow a recipe but doesn't want to. The quicker the meal the better.

DH never could understand why I would make homemade bread, desserts from scratch and dinners that would take hours. After 44 years, and considering my health, I am not going to change dance partners now. He does so much in many other ways, so I shouldn't complain. And it is just food - right? We are way out in the country so no take out deliveries.

If I could have a chef, I would spend a lot of time going over the week's menu with no repeats ever!

@caflowerluver, would you be able to cook if your DH did the prep for you?

I would cook less but never stop cooking. I love to cook and both my dear husband and I are good cooks:

Colleenoz - Thanks for asking. No, because I have no control over my hands. I can't even mix scrambled eggs. I miss cooking. I have done it my whole life. I started helping my mom at 5 YO and will be 70 YO in December. It seems weird not to be in the kitchen cooking all day.

"Never to cook again? Could you do it?"

Absolutely. Bring it on! I've always said that I want a wife, usually when I'm handing DH his dinner. Cooking is a necessity, I no longer enjoy it.

We've been on lots of cruises, and I definitely wouldn't want to eat the food long term. Most of it has been good, but just too fussy for me. More than once, I've had enough of ship food and just wanted some mac 'n cheese!

Oh no, I wouldn't like that at all. I enjoy cooking and baking, but I'd happily have someone clean up all my messes!

I don't enjoy eating out and I'm relatively picky, so I'm much happier just doing my own cooking. Washing dishes? Not so happy with that, LOL.

annie

No. We were away for the weekend and fancied a pizza. It was so disappointing, that I had to make pizza last night just so we could have a good one!

No, I enjoy cooking and baking and am the type that wants to do everything myself. No desire for luxury living either. Except the cleaning part -- Annie is right about that!

If I won a big lottery, I'd buy a party barge. I've never been on one, but they look so cool. Then I'd buy a camp on a local lake so that I'd have a place to put my party barge. When that happens, you're all invited. lol!

If I had to I could but I would rather not. I enjoy bringing people together over meals. Plus several of us cook in the family and we enjoy cooking together.

Hell no! i love to cook and love being in the kitchen. However I’ll take the money and remodel my kitchen

I like to cook. If I won the lottery, it would never occur to me to hire someone to do my cooking for me.

I would do a lot of remodeling to my house (I wouldn't buy a new house because I love this one. It just needs some updating that I can't do right now.) I'd buy another car. And I'd travel a lot.

If I had unlimited money I would love to hire help. But it would more likely be for help expanding my garden than cooking. All my little imaginary projects that never quite get gotten to. I would love to support the local community gardens as well. Maybe help cooking for a big party but not all the time.

No; only if I had a stroke ... wait, I had one of those ... The answer is still 'no'.

Hot water and ketchup ... tomato soup.