By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Taking your phone out during a meal can be considered rude, but for Kimberly Adams the sight of cell phones hovering above her food designs is a form of high praise.
The Rockford woman prides herself on presentation with her new charcuterie style catering business, 815 Amazing Graze. She creates spreads of artisan meats and cheeses paired with homegrown vegetables for both boxed takeouts and catered special events such as weddings, reunions and business gatherings.
“I think that’s fun when I see people take out their phones,” said Adams, a Hinsdale native who has lived here for more than 20 years.
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Adams, whose full-time work is as a human resources director for Plote Construction, has prepared charcuterie boards for family reunions and loved ones’ birthday parties for years. She would make pumpkin designs out of cheese with a sausage for the stem, or rivers and roses of salami.
This summer, she turned the hobby into a side business. She’s one of 27 businesses that shares space at the commercial kitchen at Rockford City Market, 116 N. Madison St., where she prepares to cater events.
“When you do a table for someone and you do an event you can make it look really beautiful and striking in a lot of ways,” she said. “You can create a lot of different art in your food.”
Next year, she plans to have a tent at the weekly summer Rockford City Market and sell boxed versions of her charcuterie designs.
Adams said she’s tinkered with charcuterie since “before it was popular,” and it has been growing in popularity in recent years.
In fact, the National Restaurant Association listed charcuterie as one of 10 hot trends for 2023 in its annual What’s Hot Culinary Forecast. That list is created through a survey of more than 500 industry professionals. On Tik Tok, the hashtag #charcuterie has 2.3 billion views.
The trend has popped up in Rockford, too. In March, Social Charcuterie Bar & Cocktails, 509 E. State St., opened in downtown Rockford with its focus on charcuterie boards, caviar and pinchos.
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Adams, whose husband, Aaron, crafts the wooden boards while she handles the food, said she tries to locally source food as much as possible. That includes selecting cheese from factories in Wisconsin, where her parents and children live.
“I try to go to the actual cheese factories and pick out supplies, she said. She also uses Earth-friendly packaging and avoids plastics.
Adams grows a lot of her own ingredients, and plucks them from her garden shortly before preparing for an event.
“All of the rosemary that you see in there, all of the vegetables that you see in there, are grown from my garden,” she said. “I usually pick them a couple hours before I leave, so they’re very, very fresh.”
She decided on the name while working in the Middle East for a previous employer, a federal contractor that supports the U.S. military. She was on assignment in a bunker in Afghanistan, where she was preparing to help onboard new employees.
“Sometimes you just didn’t know whether or not you were going to be getting out of there,” she said. “It’s by the grace of God – amazing grace – that I’m here.”
Her business became a play on those words.
Adams said her side hustle is actually a form of relaxation for her. That concept has been a part of the popularity of charcuterie. For example, in her 2020 book “That Cheese Plate Will Change Your Life,” Marie Mullins wrote that “cheese plates can be an important form of artistic self-care, like flower arranging or meditative coloring books — but you can eat the results.”
“It’s a stress-relieving type of work,” Adams said. “I think it just makes me happy doing it. I could stand there all day and just pull things together, try different things, roll things different ways.”
Contact | 815 Amazing Graze
On the web: amazinggraze815.com
Phone: 815-721-0196
Social media: Facebook and Instagram
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas