Balancing high-pressure careers in finance with the demands of raising young children left a London-based family with virtually no free time following a return from maternity leave. Working long hours on video calls that stretched from early morning into the evening, the couple found themselves trapped in a relentless cycle of nursery runs, household chores, and the nightly scramble to put dinner on the table. With extended family living far away and local childcare limited to daytime hours, the everyday routine of cooking and cleaning began to drain what little personal time they had left.
While dual-career parents often turned to supermarket-ready meals or takeout, those options frequently proved too high in salt and sugar while offering limited variety. Seeking a better alternative, the mother turned to a Facebook group for Malaysian mothers living in the United Kingdom, hoping to find someone willing to prepare home-cooked meals within a modest budget. The search led them to Evelyn, an experienced pastry chef who was on furlough in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Living in a neighboring borough in London, Evelyn proved to be an ideal match, bringing expertise in Chinese-Malaysian and Nyonya cuisine. The arrangement involved monthly visits lasting between four and six hours, costing $150 per visit at the time. Prior to each session, the menu was coordinated over WhatsApp, focusing strictly on dishes that would freeze well and reheat easily for busy weeknights. The family handled the grocery shopping ahead of time, which included ordering online and making special trips to Chinatown for less-common ingredients.
During her visits, Evelyn prepared large quantities of three distinct dishes, which she then subdivided into nine family-sized portions for freezing. The menu regularly featured traditional dishes such as ayam tempra, babi pongteh, chai boey—a sour and spicy stew utilizing leftover roast meat—and chicken with ginger and spring onion.
The four-year arrangement yielded both practical and unexpected advantages. Weekends were no longer consumed by extensive batch-cooking, allowing the parents to spend more quality time with their young children. On busy weekdays, retrieving a pre-cooked container from the freezer and pairing it with plain white rice eliminated the daily drudgery of meal preparation, even if it did not completely eliminate all cooking.
Beyond convenience, the partnership offered a deeper cultural connection. Although the mother is of Chinese-Malaysian descent, she had never learned traditional cooking growing up, relying previously on simple pasta dishes, curry chicken, and YouTube tutorials. Working alongside Evelyn provided hands-on education in ingredient selection and culinary techniques, from navigating local Chinese grocery stores to identifying specific vegetables, distinguishing between varieties of tofu, and mastering the high heat required to get a proper sear on meat.
The monthly cooking arrangement continued until the family moved away from London four years later. While they did not establish a similar service in their new location as their children grew older and work schedules became more flexible, the experience reinforced the necessity of building an independent support network far from home during the intense years of raising young children.
