Dinner is served

In a large, elegant kitchen in Norton, Carol D'Espinosa darts back and forth from the sink to the stove as she peels shrimp for shrimp burgers and keeps an eye on a boiling pot of from-scratch chicken soup that is filling the room with the smell of garlic and onion. In between, she whips up macaroni and cheese -- not from a box.

It is only 10 a.m. The kitchen is not hers. And she will not eat one morsel of her creations.

Welcome to the world of the modern meal, where everyone still loves to eat well but not everybody has time to cook. As life gets increasingly complicated, with longer commutes taking up personal time and sedentary jobs and unhealthy fast foods combining to clog arteries, more area residents are turning to personal chefs like D'Espinosa to ensure their families get tasty, wholesome meals.

They are also more likely to pick up gourmet food from places that prepare custom entrees, or multitask in commercial kitchens that enable them to socialize with friends while assembling as many as 12 dishes at a time that they can pack up and take away without having to wash a single pot or pan. With the shopping, the prep work, and the thinking already done for them, they can easily -- and quickly -- toss the assembled dishes in a skillet or in the oven at home, whenever they want.

Christine Dimino, who regularly hires D'Espinosa to cook in her Norton home , is among the modern homemakers.

``A lot of people might consider it a luxury, but when you have four kids and two jobs, and life in general, sometimes it's a necessity," said Dimino , who initially used D'Espinosa's Norton-based Made From Scratch services for a party.

She said she has continued to use D'Espinosa because she is pressed for time. Dimino, who has lost 50 pounds that she wants to keep off, works full time from home for a weight-loss company, runs a home decor party business, and has four children ages 1, 3, 5, and 7 . Her husband commutes 75 miles each way to and from his job in Andover.

In the Dimino household, and in many homes across the region, the age-old question of ``What's for dinner?" is increasingly being met with ``Who has time?" according to personal chefs associations, culinary school officials, and consumer trend watchers.

Today's parents, who are more likely to hold down a job than not, are tired. Several area communities are among the state's top 20 with the longest average commutes, according to a study based on US Census data by the think tank Mass Inc. Parents are frantically chauffering children from dance recitals to soccer games. And health-concious eaters trying to lose weight or treat a medical condition are frustrated at making meals so demandingly specialized that even Martha Stewart might throw in her spatula.

``There is no question about this: People don't want to cook," said Harry Balzer , vice president of the NPD Group , a New York marketing research firm that tracks how Americans eat. ``Cooking is a job. It's not play. If it is play, then it would be fun and we would do it more often. . . . We don't want to cook. We don't want to shop. We don't want to clean up. The only thing we want to do is eat."

Kim Bailey of Quincy loves to cook. She is single, with no children, but after working 12-hour days at her previous job managing a dental office, she didn't feel like making her own dinner. So she knew there was a need for the business she opened in the fall with her sister Robyn -- The Make & Take Kitchen in Norwell.

Clients can choose a time to come and assemble their own meals in the designer kitchen. When the cook/homemaker arrives, all the prep work is done, the measuring tools and utensils are set up, recipes are printed out, and packing containers are at the ready. The cost? It ranges from $70 for three meals, each serving four to six people, to $200 for 12 meals.

It's not unusual to find groups of friends at the Make & Take for book club meetings, birthday parties, or girls' night out, when they can catch up with one another while packing up meals that will keep them away from fast-food drive-through windows.

Business is growing, said Bailey, who had 33 clients in September and now has an average of 180 to 190 each month.

Up the street in Norwell, there's another option for busy, health-conscious consumers: customized prepared meals that can be delivered or picked up for $11.99 to $13.99 each. Gimme the Skinny has been offering that service for about five years and is growing.

Erin McDonough, a Norwell resident who works at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, began using Gimme the Skinny four years ago when her son was a busy high school student and football player.

``We were picking up pizzas all the time," said McDonough. Her son is in college now, but she has continued to use Gimme the Skinny because, she said, ``the food is so fresh and you don't feel guilty even though you didn't prepare it yourself."

Similarly, Hanover resident Rosemary Economou and her husband decided to make their lives easier by using personal chef Darlene Calcagno of Cuisine by Darlene in Hanover.

``I'm not working but I'm a stay-at-home mom, and between driving my kids to school and all the things mothers have to do, it alleviates the decision of what to have for dinner, the shopping, and the time to make it," Economou said.

The professionals who make meals for a living are counting on this being a trend.

A survey commissioned by the American Personal Chef Institute & Association indicated that, as of June 2004, there were some 8,000 personal chefs working in the country (4,000 of them are members of the association) serving about 72,000 clients. The group predicts that, within the next five years, those numbers will swell to nearly 20,000 personal chefs, with 300,000 clients.

The expectations are high at cooking schools like Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. In 2002, 12 percent of its students expressed an interest in becoming a personal chef. This year, 32 percent expressed that interest, according to Jenifer Murray, the school's career coordinator.

Like the personal chefs working now, the future pros will meet with clients to develop menus, whether it's filet mignon or meat loaf; tailor seasonings; make over a family recipe; shop for groceries; and go to the client's home to cook. They will also bring their own pots and pans with which to cook, pack food for freezing, and, perhaps just as important, leave the customer's kitchen spotless. Many will be paying attention to how they can help clients eat better or in accordance with dietary or nutritional needs.

``I see a lot of families not eating healthy," said Leslee Barbosa of The Daily Gourmet in Bridgewater. She customizes meals for a client who has a child with diabetes, and helps others to manage obesity.

``They are getting really tired of takeout food, or they go to the grocery store with good intentions and then, by Friday, they are throwing things in the trash because they didn't have time to make them. People are wasting money like crazy."

Turning over the chore of cooking to a professional isn't cheap, of course. But those who use such a service say it is well worth it. The cost varies, depending on the experience level of the chef, dietary restrictions, and special requests. Pricing can be done by the hour -- on average $30 to $80 per hour -- with a separate bill for food costs, said Murray. Most chefs can prepare many meals in a few hours. Some charge on a weekly or monthly basis and usually include the cost of food.

A recent survey commissioned by Hannaford Supermarkets indicated that less than 20 percent of Americans prepare at least one meal a day at home. Seventy percent of the 1,002 people polled from March 27 through April 4 reported that time pressures are the primary reason they don't cook meals from scratch, and 82 percent want an easier, healthier alternative to eating out or buying prepared foods.

Small wonder the supermarket chain just introduced a new line of single-serving, ``restaurant quality" meals that can be microwaved and ready to eat in 4 minutes.

Dimino, the busy Norton mother, said the best thing about not having to bother with her stove is that she can shift her attention from what is a chore to more important things.

``It allows me to take Sophia to cheerleading practice," she said of her 3-year-old daughter.

Sandy Coleman can be reached at sbcoleman@globe.com.