AngelFood PCS and Catering Company
Chef Jewels Quelly: Saying “YES!” to Adventure
While preparing her entrance application for vocational high school, Jewels Quelly requested a $100 check and her mother’s signature to enroll in Cosmetology classes. Her request was emphatically denied because, as her mother put it, “There are too many hairdressers in the world. Pick something else.” Whether the hairdressing sentiment rings true or not, Quelly chose the Food Service course instead. Since her ethnic background is 100% Pennsylvania Dutch, preparing good food and offering hospitality felt natural but she could have never imagined the joy and adventures that have come her way since then.
A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Quelly has had a diverse career in hospitality including a stint as Sous Chef of John Henry’s, owned by World Heavyweight Champion Larry Holmes. But for as much as life “behind the line” is a very real and basic part of who she is, that life did not mesh with a more important calling, being present for her husband and their (then) newborn son. “It was always assumed that I would be a work-outside-the-home mother but then I actually had a child and that notion quickly went out the door for me,” says Quelly. “Becoming a personal chef allowed me to use my education combined with culinary artistry and keep a flexible schedule.”
Quelly began AngelFood as a personal chef service in 1996. The market quickly evolved to include catering and in 2007, Quelly opened a fully licensed, inspected commercial kitchen, built by her husband on the first floor of their home. Since then, AngelFood has also established a name for itself by creating custom cakes. Between a mix of personal chef services, event catering and custom cakes, she finds her cooking schedule full enough that in order to continue growing her business, training a prep cook, dish steward and finishing cook has become necessary.
Besides cooking, Quelly’s career has evolved to include a heavy schedule of food media responsibilities. Since 1998 she has been the Food Features Correspondent for a local daily newspaper, The Express-Times and has since added two other local monthly columns to the roster. Besides making personal appearances, her favorite media job is as Station Chef for WNTI-FM, Public Radio from Centenary College (WNTI.org), where she is responsible for producing and hosting their monthly food feature.
Quelly has found that her flexibility and involvement in the community has delivered many an adventure to her door. She has been involved as a preparation assistant in training a vital taste-testing panel for a large corporation. Another of her special projects involves either catering evening parties or traveling as a personal chef on luxury rail cars. During one such trip, she and a steward boarded the train in the rail yard in Staten Island, New York, “picked up” newlyweds in Poughkeepsie and fed the lovebirds until they arrived in Montreal, where the young couple debarked. Quelly and the steward saw the car, complete with open observation deck, safely back to its home tracks. “You view hot soup completely differently when you’re in a locomotive moving 90 miles per hour,” she says.
But for all of her adventures and her love of the wind in her hair, Quelly believes there’s no place like home. Proud to call herself a Founding Member of The Personal Chefs Cooperative, she also contributes time to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, The Warren County Regional Chamber of Commerce and The ARC of Warren County. Quelly is a member of the Culinary Carousel Committee benefiting the Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault Crisis Center of Warren County and is a member of the Women’s Leadership Council of The United Way of Warren County.
She lives in Washington, New Jersey with Peter, her husband of 20 years, and their two children. You can visit her website at www.angelfoodpcs.com and her blog: diginwithjewels.blogspot.com.
