Cooking with Jan
Recipe Fun
I am dedicated to giving you the very best recipes, tips and cooking fun possible! I hope you enjoy this site. Feel free to contact me with any question you may have.
About me
My name is Jan Ness – I was born and raised in Fargo, ND. I have four wonderful grown children and 6 beautiful grandchildren. I was a stay-at-home Mom until our youngest went to kindergarten at which time I was asked by a friend if I would help out at Tri-College NDSU where he was Provost. I worked there for about 2 years and then was asked by another friend to help him out at his Insurance Brokerage while one of his employees was on Maternity leave. That gig turned out to be full time for 16 years. I put together employee benefit packages, and really enjoyed my job. But – I LOVED cooking and had always thought it would be wonderful to open my own restaurant.
In 2010 my husband and I, along with our youngest daughter and her then boyfriend were heading out of town to spend Thanksgiving weekend with our oldest daughter and her husband. On the way I saw that a building was available for rent right on University Drive and mentioned to everyone how fun it would be to open a restaurant there. Well – by the time we were heading home, the kids had our entire menu lined up and lists of equipment that we would need to start. My husband was ready to trade in his sales and management job for something new, and so we jumped on it.
CJ’s Kitchen was born on May 16th, 2011. In December of 2010 we rented the building on University Drive and started renovating it. We bought booths, counters, cooking and cooling equipment. We cleaned floors, painted, bought a sign and remodeled the kitchen so it was big enough for everything we would need. We had a hood built into the kitchen and then we were off to the races. What a fun, hard, fulfilling 11 1/2 years we had. We quickly developed a truly wonderful customer base and we got to meet new people every single day. I would not trade a moment of that 11 1/2 years for anything. We would still be there if the owner had not sold the building to a developer.
For the first few weeks after the Kitchen was closed, I had the worst head cold I’ve had in years – not able to sleep or even lay down – I wrote out all the Kitchen recipes and made a book. If you are interested it’s on Amazon – titled CJ’s Kitchen – Kitchen Favorites
So now I am taking my love of cooking to this blog. I hope you find it worthwhile and entertaining. Hopefully you can learn something new and laugh a bit at my video blunders. A Techie I am Not!