Profile

Hello, my name is Janni, and I'm a serial multitasker. If you'd like to learn more about the Janniverse (which is largely quadrilateral), read on!


COOKING

After going to culinary school, I decided to start a personal chef business called Big Chef, based in the Chicagoland area. I also maintain a more food-specific blog there called The Spice is Right. While I hope to one day have enough happy and regular clients that this venture is all I need, that hope can unfortunately not pay bills. Not only that, I'm someone who's not happy unless she's busy...well, most of the time. And obviously, I love the world of food...growing it, cooking it, baking it, and dreaming about it. What do you do with that mindset?

You find yourself a job or three. In addition to my personal cheffing business, I'm also a professional bread baker at Lynfred Winery and cook at a fantastic and rather popular Thai restaurant called Happy Elephant.

WRITING

Non-cooking-relatedly, I'm also interested in cars (particularly in Formula One and WRC), and write about them frequently at a website called CarEnvy. From time to time, I write other places as well, and will likely post here about those too.

KNITTING

Also, if I'm watching a film or TV, I am most often knitting as I cannot keep still for any serious length of time. I sometimes contribute to CraftyCrafty with regard to either the knitting thing or the cooking thing as well. While I do on occasion work from other people's designs, I'm finding the most fun now is creating my own. Which also means I can sell my work, so you'll find plenty of posting here about that, too. And you can always check out the Janniverse shop on Etsy, too, if you'd like to buy some of my work! :)

MOTORBIKES

I've been an avid rider for nearly four years now, and am delving ever deeper into the nuts and bolts (literally) of my current bike. He's called Harvey, and he's a 2006 Suzuki Burgman 400 (yes, the "Harvey Burgman" nomenclature was completely intentional). Once you get the body panels off, he's quite easy to work on...but those panels are seriously demoralizing! One day I'd like to get a Honda Hawk GT 650, preferably blue. I'm also in the process of creating an international forum for women who ride, as there seems to be a lack of such resources even though there are more than enough serious female riders! You'll probably see me post quite a bit about many and various motorbike and motorbike-forum-related projects here as well.

BUNNIES

Some people are cat people. Some people are dog people. Some people are fish people. My SO and I? We're bunny people. Our house is currently owned and operated by a wonderful cow-splodged rabbit called Moo, who is gracious enough to allow us to live here in exchange for feeding him, scratching his nose, and tending to his every need and whim.

And yes, the Janniverse is still "quadrilateral," because the bunnies are totally an added bonus. ;)

Finally, you can follow the Janniverse on Twitter, and also be my Facebook friend. :)