JMU chef to appear on Food Network

HARRISONBURG, Va. — A James Madison University sous chef will be competing in a televised cooking competition on Sunday.

By appearing on "Guy's Grocery Games," Catherine “Caitie” Maharg will be fulfilling a dream born of a childhood battle with brain cancer.

“I was not a huge fan of hospital food,” says Maharg. She was 10 when she decided she “wanted to bring joy into people’s lives through food.” Maharg played in the kitchen, watched the Food Network and dreamed of being a chef and appearing on the culinary channel. In fact, she was so eager to become a chef that she graduated a year early from Waynesboro High School and completed a three-year Culinary Apprenticeship Program with Anheuser-Busch at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg.

Maharg joined the Aramark team at JMU’s East Campus Dining Hall in February 2014 and serves as co-captain of Dining Services’ Relay for Life teams. Whenever possible, she is a counselor and cooking instructor at Camp Fantastic, a nearby summer camp for young cancer patients that she attended as a child.