I hired a personal chef to cook a week of meals for my family. My son now wants a butler.

For a week, I put my family's dinners and snacks in the hands of a professional. Dolly Faibyshev for BI I grew up in a Bagel Bites and SnackWell's kind of '90s household, descending from a long, prestigious line of women who did the cooking required of mothers without once pretending to enjoy it. Take, for example, my Grandma Lillie, a brilliant woman who deserved to go to college alongside her brother in the 1930s, but instead became a beloved homemaker. She engineered her family's meal…