After receiving a snarky comment from
my own mother (
gasp!) about my procrastination, I feel like I have to make good on my promise to write today. Again, though, there's the time issue. So, I decided to post a profile I wrote last quarter. My beat was Women's Issues, and I was interested in writing about a female entrepreneur. Janine MacLachlan turned out to be a reporter's dream. Incidentally, she lives (and works) in my neighborhood. Profile follows:
Janine MacLachlan stands in front of her stove, stirring a simmering pot of soy milk, Seedling Fruit cider and a special blend of spices. As frothy liquid starts to bubble over the edge of the pot, MacLachlan vacillates a few moments before deciding to upgrade to a larger one.
She energetically explains that the cider is from Chicago’s own Green City Market, and the spices are an original concoction of nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. She serves her Chai Cider in two oversized mugs.
MacLachlan runs a cooking school from her circa-1893 home. She sits with her feet tucked under her in her Lakeview kitchen, which has also been her workplace since 1999. She explains how she decided to name her business the Rustic Kitchen.
“I wanted people to understand that [food] can still be delicious and not too fancy,” she says.
“Some people are intimidated.”
The Rustic Kitchen is anything but intimidating. It is located in MacLachlan’s second-floor apartment on tree-lined Brompton Avenue but is more French country home than metropolitan walk-up.
Sunlight streams through two large windows and a door that stands open to a porch. Pots of all sizes hang from a rack in the ceiling. MacLachlan has created an intimate sitting area with a small tablecloth-covered table, two wicker-backed chairs and a comfy armchair of yellow plaid. Whimsical food quotes adorn the walls: “Life is a combination of magic and pasta,” says Federico Fellini.
“Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on sundaes,” Judith Olney advises. “It makes people overjoyed and puts them in your debt.”
“If you are given champagne at lunch there is a catch somewhere,” Lord Lyons warns.
A black and white photograph of MacLachlan hangs in a lamp-lit corner. In it she wears a crisp, white chef’s coat and reverently clasps a bunch of asparagus. She calls it “Praying with asparagus.”
The Rustic Kitchen is not a cooking school in the traditional sense, and MacLachlan is not a typical chef. Her business encompasses a variety of entrepreneurial enterprises: classes, demonstrations, farmer’s market tours, writing and recipe development.
This 30-something foodie says she grew up in Saginaw, Mich., eating frozen food from a box. Her mother married at 21, had four children right away and didn’t care to cook.
MacLachlan says she had a Suzy Homemaker oven as a girl and admits that she always liked to cook.
In college at Central Michigan University, she studied journalism because there was no public relations degree. She liked writing but wanted more variety.“Public relations is storytelling, content providing in a different way.” MacLachlan says. “I’m drawn to that.”
She spent most of her career in agencies working with food and wine clients like Land O’ Lakes butter, Quaker oatmeal, Crisco oil and shortening and the California Wine Institute. Laughing, she says, “I got to say I only drink when I’m working.” While working with Land O’Lakes, MacLachlan went on the set of “Baking with Julia” with food legend Julia Child, who, she interjects comically, used a lot of butter. She has also worked with dessert doyenne Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa fame and healthy-eating authority Graham Kerr.
In 1999 MacLachlan left her successful career in public relations to experience life on the other side of the stove. She headed to Greystone, Calif., where she spent several months taking a survey of classes at the Culinary Institute of America.
After she returned, she opened the Rustic Kitchen. The cooking classes were not an end in themselves. The marketing maven says her classes were simultaneously an internal focus group for her recipe development. She has created sumptuous recipes like white bean soup with roasted garlic and rosemary for Bush’s Beans and gooey Karo krispers for Karo Syrup.
MacLachlan says she knew if she set aside time to pursue cooking something would bubble up.
“It’s a calculated risk,” she says. “It’s not so much of a risk when you know you can go back at any time.” She thinks about this for a moment and adds, “It’s easy to be an entrepreneur when all you need to do is support yourself.”
MacLachlan markets herself on her Web site,
http://www.rustickitchen.com/, as, among other things, a corporate creativity coach who can help food or wine clients craft a message to a target audience. She targets her own classes both to novice cooks seeking private lessons and to corporate clients seeking a hands-on team-building experience.
For MacLachlan, her work is her way of life. She is passionate about eating fresh, seasonal foods and supporting local farmers. She customizes menus for every class. Whether she designs a menu offering a Mediterranean-inspired dinner with caramelized onion tart a la Provence or a springtime dinner with carrot ginger soup depends on the season. She says she has been really into chestnuts lately – chestnut ice cream and chestnut apple soup. She describes a burgeoning friendship with the farmer who sells the chestnuts at the Green City Market.“My favorite part of the week is going to the farmer’s market,” MacLachlan says. “It’s a community.”
The self-described farm groupie adds, “Chefs know they are only as good as their farmers.”
It makes sense, then, that MacLachlan is the co-leader of the Chicago branch of Slow Food USA, an organization dedicated to ecologically sound food production and seasonal culinary traditions.
“This is where I’m putting my P.R. cap on,” she says. “[The group] is helping us understand that good food comes from somewhere and has a face behind it.”
MacLachlan seems to never take that cap off.
“For my next job, I’m going to set up a folding chair on a campus and help people with interview skills – presentation and managing expectations,” she says.
It’s impossible to tell if she’s joking.
