By David Farmbrough- Special to the City-Times

Wisconsin Rapids has a new personal chef in town, and she’s coming to a home near you to cook your meals.

Kaitlyn’s Home Cookiing was founded last year by Kaitlyn Federwitz. After studying culinary arts at Fox Valley Technical College, Federwitz, decided to separate her company from others by cooking in her clients’ homes.

“I found a book in high school that had different culinary careers, because I decided that I liked to eat so I liked to cook,” Federwicz said. “But I knew I didn’t want to be a chef in a restaurant- I didn’t care for those hours.”

Federwitz says that she has always wanted to be a personal chef, but only started the business full-time in September last year. She had been building up a client base since February of last year while working on the project part-time, whose clients included the Wood County Boys and Girls Club.

“Before starting the business I worked at Baum’s Mercantile in Pittsville doing catering there,” she said. “I ran the food service at St Paul’s Lutheran School for two and a half years, and then I worked at Port Edwards Schools in their high school doing their food service.”

Federwitz said she was excited to cook for adults again after cooking for children.

“I like to try new things and like to make people happy with my food,” Federwitz said. “When I was at St. Paul’s I was the (food) director there, so I made the menus. We tried to do as much as we could from scratch, new salads, new vegetables- the kind of things that schools are getting into now.”

Despite the change in clientele, Federwitz said while she’s asked for specific dishes and ethnic entrees, she’s more interested in offering comfort food rather than gourmet.

“I did some casseroles when they were trendy for a while. But I do watch cooking shows and read food magazines. I like to mix it up once in a while if the client wants that, as I like cultural foods. I have one client who has recently requested a certain soup several times, and I don’t mind that, because that makes the menu planning easier.”

Federwitz said she used local ingredients whenever possible.

“I also try to keep things organic, but I also try to keep my customer’s costs down. I am really happy because ALDI’s has started carrying a lot more organic food now,” she said. “If the customer is particularly into buying local ingredients…I will do that for them.”

Typically, Federwitz plans her clients’ menus in advance and gets approval from the shopping list over email. She said she has a client in Wausau who doesn’t like to do the shopping, so every other Tuesday she hits local stores there, brings the ingredients along with her own pots and pans to the client’s home and cooks up a storm.

“Then I am there for four to five hours cooking and put it in pans to be heated up and they have two weeks’ worth of meals,” she said.
Federwitz also provides the service for senior citizens.

“I have a special senior citizen package, and they usually get lunches and dinners. The other customers usually get larger portions and slightly higher quality food,” she said. “The senior citizen meals are a little smaller and not so much variety, but there’s definitely different items every day of the week, and those are priced affordably for that group of people. The packages I offer are for 2 to 8 people.”

Federwitz hopes to expand her business in 2014 in both Wisconsin Rapids or Steven Point.

“A lot of people don’t like to cook, or don’t know how to cook, but they still want home cooked meals,” she said.

For more information you can find Kaitlyn’s Home Cooking online at http://www.KaitlynsHomeCooking.Weebly.com