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 In the News
Leave it to Liz was featured in the August 17, 2005 issue of the Katy Courier newspaper (Katy, TX) while Liz was serving the Katy area! (Reprinted here with permission.) (Note: Leave it to Liz is now serving the Tulsa, OK area.)
Katy families find a personal chef no longer a luxury By MEREDITH DARNELL When Nottingham Country resident Margaret [last name deleted] was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, she resolved to eat more nutritional meals. However, her chemotherapy treatments and her job as a seventh-grade English teacher drained her energy, making her kitchen the last place she wanted to be. So, she called Grand Lakes resident Liz Mount, owner of Leave it to Liz, a Katy-based personal chef service. Mount worked with [Margaret] to plan menus that incorporated her family's culinary preferences, then shopped for the ingredients and prepared the meals in [Margaret's] home using her own equipment. "It probably seems like a luxury, but it was necessary for us," said [Margaret], who purchases 10 meals a month from Mount. "We come home tired from working and we can just heat it up in 20 minutes. We can sit down and eat, and [the food is] better than going out at most places."
Saving time and her extensive menu offerings are a big draw for her clients, Mount said. "(Personal chefs) are for everyday people and for people who value their time," Mount said. Typically, Mount spends six hours in her clients' kitchens per visit to prepare enough food for 20 meals for one person. Menus are built from Mount's large recipe collection and, unless a client specifically requests, entrées are rarely repeated in a six-month period. Mount has used 219 recipes for her longest-running client, an interior decorator in Houston, who has been with her for more than a year. "Most people who are cooking for themselves tend to cook the same things over and over," Mount said. Several of Mount's many menu items include shrimp with Thai coconut-curry sauce, ham-and-broccoli quiche, chicken with prosciutto and mushrooms, and stuffed peppers with turkey, rice, spinach and cheese. At [Margaret's] household, they term their favorites "comfort food." "She knows to swing the salmon cakes in," [Margaret] said. [Margaret] said she also likes the sizes of the meals Mount prepares because she usually has leftovers for lunch the next day. "But her food is so good that if you have leftovers, they aren't going to stay around. There's no waste," [Margaret] said.
Mount, whose favorite is Italian food, has been in Katy-area home kitchens, large and small, as a personal chef for two years — a far cry from the engineer position she left at UNOCAL when the company was undergoing reorganization. She flirted briefly with going to culinary school, even taking classes at the Culinary Institute of America in California, but decided against it. She knew she wanted to cook, but she wasn't sure what to pursue until she came across www.uspca.com, the Web site for the United States Personal Chef Association. "The light bulb went on," she said. And Leave it to Liz was created in March 2003. She signed up for the next available training course at the Culinary Business Academy and started cooking in August for family and friends to "practice." In September, the former Louisiana resident was preparing Cajun barbecued shrimp for her first paying customer. "I just love to cook," she said. "And I love food." With 163 cookbooks and piles of cooking magazines, Mount is always looking for new dishes to offer her clients, even when she dines out. "I'm always analyzing food when [my husband and I] eat out," Mount said. "'Like, what's in that sauce?'"
Although [Margaret] no longer needs chemotherapy she's still "leaving things to Liz." "It was so well worth what she was doing for us," [Margaret] said. "As long as I'm working, I'm going to continue with Liz. She has really spoiled us. I still cook. But, I am not a gourmet cook." [Margaret] enjoys having a personal chef, but she said she is a little embarrassed sometimes. "In this society, women feel like they need to do everything," she said. "I really haven't said anything at school about her. It seems like a big luxury. But to me I know there are teachers with cleaning services." For about $13 to $17 per meal, Mount's clients can get a basic service for two weeks' worth of meals for a couple, including the cost of groceries. When [Margaret] analyzed her food finances, she said she would have spent the leftovers on someone to clean her house if she did not have a personal chef. "It would even out to me," she said. "We just think she's worth it." "I can't think of really a better situation," she said. [Margaret], her husband, Russell, and their daughter, Meg, aren't the only fans of Mount's cooking. Laddie, the family dog, is probably Mount's biggest fan, getting some [Margaret]-approved scraps when she's in the kitchen. "He knows her, and he's real happy," [Margaret] said.
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