A recipe for success

By Julia Oller | Echo

With a smile spread across her face, Meg Jeffers passes a plate of freshly cooked pasta smothered in béchamel sauce through the glass partition and into the hands of the hungry student in front of her.

"Let me know how it tastes!" she says as he walks away.

She means it.

Jeffers, 26, has Celiac disease, a condition where the body reacts to the protein gluten-found in wheat and barley-by attacking the small intestine and causing extreme abdominal pain. Eating even a crumb of bread can trigger nausea and an upset stomach.

Jeffers began working at Taylor in the fall of 2013 as a chef at the Chef's Corner station in the DC. She has since been promoted to Chef de Cuisine. Since the meals she made often included gluten products, she was forced to rely on her co-workers to provide feedback.

"I really have to trust the people I work with to pull around me," she said. "I'm a little bit OCD . . . . I like everything to be perfect, so it's hard for me."

In her new role, Jeffers no longer cooks for students. Her pile of responsibilities now includes planning the menus for Chef's Corner and the catering department, placing orders for all of the food in the DC, overseeing kitchen production.

"At this point I'm just exhausted," she said.

Tired though she may be, you wouldn't know by watching her. An animated speaker, her hands were in constant motion as she described the roots of her deep love of food.

Her passion began with beef and noodles.

As a little girl, Jeffers began cooking alongside her grandmother, and their close relationship was molded as they spent hours in the kitchen rolling out homemade noodles.

Her grandma's influence is even behind Jeffers' signature dish.

"I make a darn good chicken and dumplings," she said. "Better than Cracker Barrel's!"

While her grandmother is all about the "fat and lard," Jeffers' earthy side was birthed during childhood summers spent running around barefoot in her mom's garden, plucking ripe tomatoes straight from the vine.

Food may have been her true love, but after graduating high school, Jeffers entered Ball State University to pursue advertising. She wasn't happy with her classes, so her mom asked her, "Why don't you do something with cooking?"

Since Ball State didn't have a culinary program, Jeffers enrolled in Ivy Tech Community College, working at Muncie pubs and restaurants such as Pizza King. She returned to Ball State in 2008, this time to work as a certified chef. Jeffers climbed the ranks and moved to Anderson University as the sous chef in 2012.

"To be a chef, if you have the personality and basic skills you can go anywhere," Jeffers said. "And that's what I did."

She moved up the ladder, but Jeffers didn't reach the top until she arrived at Taylor University. Not only was she able to nourish the students, she could better feed herself.

When Jeffers was first diagnosed with Celiac while working at Ball State, the gluten-free options were minimal, and she barely ate. At Taylor, she is thankful for the wide variety of foods she can eat.

Gluten-free desserts are especially exciting.

"I can have a doughnut," she said. "It's a godsend."

No longer does she struggle to roll up her bone-dry tortilla into an edible burrito. Thanks to the flood of improved gluten-free products on the market, up to 900 from less than 200 in 2004, her toppings are protected in the softer, tastier tortillas now available.

"It's a dream," she said.

Working on Taylor's campus has also been a dream.

Her co-chef at Chef's Corner, Larry Mealy, showed her around campus when she first arrived, giving her a book about Samuel Morris and introducing her to Taylor traditions such as Silent Night.

"It gives me goose bumps just talking about it," she said.

But even more than token events, Jeffers relishes the Taylor community.

The challenging part of moving from the DC floor into the Chef de Cuisine role hasn't been the added responsibility so much as decreased face time with Taylor students.

"This is the most amazing body of students I've served," she said. "Interacting with (them) is a huge happiness in my day."

Jeffers admits that she has high standards when it comes to the food she prepares, but her meticulousness is an expression of how much she cares.

"Food is an expression of love," Jeffers said.

Someday Jeffers hopes to serve this love in her own restaurant and brewery, preferably in Florida. She already has a business plan in place and the ambition to take her the rest of the way. Her dad will grow the hops, her mom will tend the garden and she will do the cooking. The brewery's mission will be to "give people wholesome food with pure love."

Jeffers doesn't believe in using recipes; she prefers the "throw it together" method. But there are a few ingredients that never fail to make it into her dishes.