Kim Hildreth prepares food in her Ayer Road home for her business Thyme for Dinner. (Photos by Cyndy Karon)

Kim Hildreth would like to be the answer to your “what’s for dinner” question. It’s a question that weighs heavily on the minds and stomachs of busy Harvardites, who often arrive home late and look gloomily into a depleted refrigerator. As a personal chef, Hildreth offers residents of Harvard and surrounding towns ready-to-cook meals, packaged as individual servings or family style.

She explained in a recent interview that customers employ her for various reasons. Some are too busy to dream up menus for balanced meals, shop for ingredients, cook, and clean up. “If you find that you’re not very easily able to gather your family around the table, this service helps that,” she said. Some clients have specific nutritional goals, like lowering weight or cholesterol. Others purchase her services as gifts for that person who “has everything,” to assist friends or family members during times of illness, or as corporate performance awards.

Hildreth said that she’s very flexible about working within a client’s budget. Many clients employ her for one or two weeks out of the month, and stockpile frozen meals for use on especially busy days. Some clients travel extensively on business and prefer her home-cooked entrees to yet another restaurant meal. There’s no obligation to continue, and clients are welcome to increase or decrease the frequency of service at any time.

Hildreth said that the cost of her services is competitive, as compared to the cost and time required to eat out and perishable foods that go to waste. Just as important, said Hildreth, “the cost of not eating well is more detrimental than just about anything else.” A steady diet of fast food and pizza or even easy stand-bys, like packaged macaroni and cheese, isn’t healthy for kids or adults, she said.

Hildreth goes through an extensive questionnaire with prospective clients to be sure she understands their particular needs, food likes and dislikes, and nutritional objectives. She submits menus for clients’ approval. Hildreth said she shops extensively to pick the best quality fruits, vegetables, and meats she can find.

A sample menu for a family of four included the following entrees, each provided with side dishes: artichoke-and-feta-cheese stuffed chicken breasts, baked salmon in pecan crunch coating, Italian beef stew, braised Chinese chicken, and cheese and vegetable manicotti. As indicated by these choices, Hildreth enjoys cooking a variety of cuisines, including vegetarian, and is happy to modify recipes to accommodate food preferences. Although she’s happy to repeat favorites, she also likes to offer customers new choices, figuring they can repeat old standbys on their own.

As a student at the Newbury Culinary Academy, Hildreth said she heard a lot about the terrors of working in a traditional kitchen. Child rearing and active participation in a variety of volunteer positions with the Congregational Church and Girl Scouts caused Hildreth to put her career objectives on hold for a number of years.

She struck on the personal chef business as a perfect way to combine her love for the creative process of cooking with sharing the nurturing aspects of food with others. “Part of that nurturing is giving families the opportunity to sit around the dinner table and be together,” said Hildreth. “It’s not just filling your belly, but eating good food. Somehow, eating pizza out of a cardboard box just doesn’t make for the same experience.”

Hildreth said that her business has grown steadily during the past two years, exclusively via word of mouth. She reported that she’s had “absolutely no unhappy clients, although, if there were, I’d MAKE them happy.”

“I become a part of people’s families, in many ways,” Hildreth says. “I feel that I’m able to nurture families, which is a priority for me. I love it that something that I enjoy doing is so helpful to others.”

Contact Hildreth at 456-3826. Gift certificates are available. Although Hildreth’s delivery area is limited to Harvard and surrounding towns, she prepares frozen entrees that are suitable for gift giving.