Mrs. Jeanette ‘Does What She Does Best’

Few trips to the Ouachita Commons are complete without stopping by the international line to see what Jeanette Taylor is cooking.

Always wearing a white Sodexo chef’s coat with her name embroidered on the left chest and a cap, Mrs. Jeanette, as she is affectionately referred to by students, makes something fresh every lunch and dinner. After fifteen years working in Ouachita’s cafeteria, she brings the same enthusiasm she brought when she first started.

“It’s exciting to work in here,” she said with a chuckle, “serving the kids and talking with them.”

Taylor admits her favorite part of her job is interacting with the students.

“I like getting to know [the students] and being friends with them,” she said. “I just enjoy them, being around them, and a lot of them come to me and talk to me about their problems and things, and I enjoy that.”

A native of Hollandale, Miss., a small town along the Mississippi River, she lived there for 22 years before moving to Chicago with her boyfriend of the time.

“Chicago was a lot of fun; there are a lot of things to do there,” she said.

It was her mom’s battle with cancer that brought her to Arkadelphia.

“When I came, she didn’t want me to go back to Chicago,” Taylor said. “She said, ‘Chicago ain’t no place for you and I don’t want to hear that my daughter is in Chicago,’ so after she passed away, I just stayed.

“She wanted me to stay, so I said I could at least to that, stay around here.”

Nineteen years later, she is still here – now with a brand new husband. Taylor, 48, married James Stewart, 54, on Dec. 21, 2012.

“We were engaged for about a year and a half,” she said. “We got married at the courthouse and it was so special – we spent time together and just chilled, just had fun.”

Taylor described her husband as “real nice, sweet, exciting, fun to be around.”

“We like doing things together,” she said. “He’s mostly a homebody; he doesn’t work and stays home most of the time. If he goes anywhere, we go together.”

Stewart has five grown children; Taylor has three: son Frank and daughters Genterris and Nashanna.

Taylor is a member of Greater Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church. In addition to going to church, she said she likes to spend time with her grandkids and go shopping. R&B is her favorite kind of music.

“I like jazz, some pop; rap, so so,” she said. “I don’t care for that much rap. I mean, I’ll listen to it as long as it doesn’t have a lot of bad language in it, but other than that, I like R&B.”

Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” is her favorite song.

“I love that song,” Taylor said. “[When Houston passed away,] my heart just broke. I even caught myself crying – tears were running from my eyes.

“I like Whitney. I couldn’t believe it though. It took me a while to really believe that she was gone.”

Taylor also likes dancing and going to the movies.

She said she got her start in cooking because of her mom.

“I’ve just been cooking all my life,” she said. “My mom had us in the kitchen cooking, and I’ve been cooking ever since.”

She said she does a lot of “country cooking,” also stemming from her mom.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of chitlins,” she said. “Yeah, she cooked chitlins and maybe mustard turnip greens and yams and cornbread, some mac and cheese – yeah, she used to cook everything.”

Her favorite food to eat is meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese, greens and cornbread.

Taylor said her favorite dishes to cook at Ouachita include quesadillas, omelets and smoothies. Students have taken a liking to her pancakes.

“Ain’t no secret [recipe],” she said. “Ain’t nothing special about it; maybe they like it because I have all the different kinds of chocolate chips out there. I know they love chocolate chip pancakes, so if we have them I try to have them out here with all different kinds of chips.”

As for the other meals she prepares, she said her seasoning is the secret.

“I just fix what they tell me to fix, but I season it the way I want it to be seasoned, because I know how I want my food to taste,” she said. “I fix it the way I want to fix it and I taste it to make sure it is right and everything because I know if I like it, they’ll probably like it.”

Taylor’s day starts at 9:30 a.m., when she clocks in.

“Then I say good morning to everybody and start preparing for lunch,” she said. “After lunch I clean up my station and I take my break. When I come back off my break, I start with dinner for 4:30.”

After dinner, she cleans again before leaving for the night.

“Her positive energy, it’s contagious,” said Jon Fitzgerald, Sodexo’s general manager. “She’s always in a good mood and people like that.”

Though not the longest-serving member of the dining staff, Fitzgerald said “she’s a staple” in the cafeteria. She has been at the international line, doing “Showtime by Jeanette,” most of her time here.

“When I got here, she said, ‘I’m kind of tired of [the international line]; I want to try something else,” Fitzgerald said, “so we moved her to the bakery for just a brief time, just two or three weeks. But Showtime was not a good thing anymore, so we moved her back and she hasn’t left there since.

“That’s her thing. She’s good at it, she knows what to do. She comes in and looks at the recipes and that’s what she’ll go with that day.”

Fitzgerald said some improvements are coming to the international line over the summer to expand what Taylor can cook.

“We’re actually trying to get a full grill up there, like a flat top with some charcoal and gas burners so she can really cook up there,” he said. “That’s where I want to get with Showtime.”

Taylor said this has been her favorite job.

“It’s fun being out there letting the kids see me do what I do best,” she said.

For students, Taylor’s smile is a bright spot in days full of the stress of classes, exams and homework.

“Mrs. Jeanette always brightens my day with her kindness,” said Nathan Dickard, a sophomore mass communications, Christian studies and biblical languages major. “She’s always smiling when she hands you your food and wishes you a good day.”

Jeanette Taylor

Birthday: Feb. 20
Home: Hollandale, Miss.
Favorite Color: Purple
Favorite Food: Meatloaf
Favorite Music: R&B
Biggest Influence: My mom
As a child, I wanted to: Run track
Something I hope to accomplish: I want to quit smoking cigarettes. I don’t smoke much, only about one cigarette a day, so I know I could quit
If I had to choose another job, I would: Still do what I do. Maybe a chef, have my own restaurant, just cooking and serving people