Valley woman turns passion for cooking into thriving catering business

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The blackened salmon pasta is conscionable 1 of Joelle Grijalva's specialties.

"I emotion cooking with seafood," she said. "I emotion spices. I emotion pasta."

She adjacent made the condiment from scratch.

"One of my emotion languages is being capable to amusement emotion done my food," she said.

The self-taught cook is the culinary creator down Yummy J's.

Through catering, meal-prep services and to-go plates, Joelle loves pushing the boundaries erstwhile it comes to accepted cuisine.

"I'm ace passionate astir it, truthful I wanted to larn much and started experimenting with antithetic recipes," Grijalva said.

Yummy J's versatile recipes person gained a pursuing from fans and chap chefs.

"I'm decidedly known for my homemade mac and cheese," Grijalva said. "I've done a collaboration with a bully person of mine, Anthony's Tacos. We bash a birria mac and we virtually ever merchantability out."

Joelle recovered her emotion of cooking during the pandemic.

"I started posting pictures and videos of making strawberry pizzas and banana puddings, and radical started to interaction me," she said.

Soon, she'd crook that passionateness into a profession.

The thriving concern would outgrow her location kitchen, truthful she teamed up with the Clovis Culinary Center, knowing their services would assistance her instrumentality her concern to the adjacent level.

"When I'm here, I'm usually cooking for my catering, my repast preps, besides prepping for thing that I person going on," she said. "If I americium going to bash an intimate meal astatine a home, I'll travel here, prep everything and I'll navigator astatine their home."

Weekly repast prep and monthly to-go sheet pop-ups are posted to her Instagram, wherever you'll besides spot the acquisition she creates done catering.

Pricing ranges depending connected enactment size and menu.

"I bask getting to cognize people," Grijalva said. "I bask them welcoming maine into their home. I deliberation it's truthful peculiar I get to provender them, their household and friends. It conscionable makes maine truthful happy."

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