Confessions of Jessica Shelly

Jessica Shelly, food services director at Cincinnati Public Schools, doesn’t get celebrity reality shows, wouldn’t travel back in time if given the option and admires Walt Disney. 

Q. What is the best part of your job?

Getting to watch a child try (and like!) a new food for the first time.

Q. What is the worst part of your job?

Navigating through the flaming hoops of red tape.

Q. What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?

It's a tie between marrying my soul mate and getting to be a mom to my triplet boys.

Q. What is the most unusual foodservice/catering request you have ever received?

Sushi. Ironically, we started serving it our high schools this year.

Q. If you weren't in foodservice what would you be doing?

Executive in consumer marketing knowledge.

Q. Which talent would you most like to have?

Playing the piano. My playing is so bad I can't Handel it. Ha! (Maybe I should have said joke telling.)

Q. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Being too demanding of myself.

Q. Which living person do you most admire?

My mom. She is my rock and my role model.

Q. What is your favorite meal?

Tapas and sangria.

Q. What is your guilty pleasure?

Salt and vinegar potato chips. I don't have a sweet tooth, I have a salt craving.

Q. What will people always find in your refrigerator?

Frank's Red Hot. I truly do put that sh*t on everything.

Q. What food fad do you wish had never started?

Chef reality shows.

Q. What is the weirdest food you have ever eaten?

When I was an intern at the Cincinnati Zoo in undergrad, we would eat what we fed to the animals—mealworms, crickets and primate biscuits were a frequent lunch.

Q. Are you a morning or evening person?

I'm a night owl.

Q. What are your words to live by?

“This, too, shall pass.”

Q. If you had a time machine what historical event or era would you visit?

Two words: butterfly effect. I wouldn't do it. 

Q. What would be your dream vacation?

Galapagos Islands.

Q. If you could eat dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be?

Walt Disney. I loved his creative entrepreneurship.

Q. What is your most treasured possession?

My most treasured possessions are not things, they are my family, friends and memories.

Q. What activity is at the top of your bucket list?

Set foot in every continent.