Front Porch Has a New Chef: Meet Chef Ja’Nicole

 

New Beginnings

There is a new chef running our kitchen! Jazmine Sterling, Chef Ja’Nicole in the kitchen, joined Front Porch this summer as our Dietary Manager. She has spent more than twenty years feeding people in places where the food has to be right: a hospital, a school system, a food plant, and now a personal care home in Bowdon. She is also a minister and a mother of two. And if you ask her what cooking is, she will not start by talking about food.

More than preparing meals

“Cooking has always been more than preparing meals. It’s my way of showing love, bringing people together, and creating moments that make people feel at home.”

She wrote that in the letter she sent to introduce herself to our residents and their families. It is not a small thing to say to a house full of people who handed over their own kitchens when they moved in. Most of our residents cooked for their families for fifty or sixty years. Dementia may blur the recipes, but nobody forgets what a real meal feels like when it lands in front of them. That is the standard she walked in holding, and nobody here had to set it for her.

Twenty years of feeding people who count on it

Her resume is a tour of the kitchens where mistakes are not allowed. Five years in quality assurance at Pilgrim’s Pride, where food safety is checked in a lab. School nutrition for the Douglas County School System, feeding children under USDA rules. Then seven years as a Lead Cook at Tanner Health in Carrollton, in a hospital kitchen where every tray is built for the one patient it is going to, with no room for close enough. She trained the new hires there herself.

She did all of that while going back to school on her own timeline, twice. First a diploma in Business Administration from West Georgia Technical College in 2011. Then an Associate Degree in Culinary Arts from the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. “Education has always been important to me,” she wrote, and she sequenced hers deliberately: the business first, then the craft, so she could run a kitchen and not just cook in one. She is ServSafe certified on top of it.

Why this hire matters here

Meals carry a lot of weight in a personal care home. For many of our residents, the day is organized around the table. Appetites change with age and with dementia, and the difference between a resident who eats well and one who quietly doesn’t often comes down to whether the food is worth showing up for. So we took our time filling this job. It is one of the most important hires we make.

Her goal for our dining room, in her words, is meals that are “not only nutritious but also delicious, comforting, and something they genuinely look forward to each day.” Every plate, she says, should be served “with excellence, compassion, and a smile.” We intend to hold her to that. We expect it to be easy.

Minister, mother, chef

The serving does not stop when the apron comes off. Chef Ja’Nicole is a minister at Church Without Walls, where she spends her time, as she puts it, “encouraging and serving others through my faith.” She is the proud mother of two, Jameliah and Jalon, and she says they are the reason she works hard, leads by example, and gives her best every day.

One line in her application stood out before we ever met her: “I believe in supporting my team, maintaining high standards, and creating an environment where both employees and residents feel valued and respected.” Employees and residents, in the same sentence. Taking good care of the people who take care of your family is the whole model at Front Porch. She had the model before she had the job.

Her welcome letter ends with a line we may steal for the dining room wall:

“Great meals nourish the body, but serving with love nourishes the heart.”