Twenty years in kitchens, out of them now, and I still want to cook for somebody

I spent twenty years on a line and my back finally decided against it two years ago. I do something quieter now and the thing I miss is not the pace or the shouting. It is cooking for people who are going to eat it, to a standard set by somebody else, with somebody checking the plate before it goes out.

Thirty five, Queens. Two years into this and one short arrangement that ended when she moved to another city for work.

What I want is to cook in a household twice a week. Shopping done by me, the meal planned around what somebody actually likes rather than what I feel like making, and criticism afterwards that is specific. Twenty years of being told a dish is wrong and doing it again is not a hardship for me, it is what I understand as normal, and it is the part civilians find surprising.

The rest of my offer is ordinary. I clean as I go, I leave a kitchen better than I found it, and I do not linger.

I have to say the money part because of my history. I am not for hire. I cooked for a living for two decades and would not do it again for anybody I knew this way. Nothing changes hands, I buy what is needed, and if somebody tries to settle up with me I will stop coming. Nothing physical. Nothing performed. Just the food, done properly.