Community activist launches catering service in Evansville
EVANSVILLE – If you need weekly meal prep or catering services with a menu of anything from globally influenced cuisine to Southern and Soul Food favorites, Peace4U Hospitality LLC by Jasmine (Roxanne) Calhoun is a new and growing business in Evansville worth checking out.
Who is Jasmine Calhoun?
Calhoun’s just a neat person. She’s barely 30, and has spent her entire academic and working life gaining culinary experience. She’s also a community activist.
“I knew I wanted to be a chef from the time I was eight years old,” Calhoun said. “My mom used to buy me little (children's) cookbooks. One day I accidentally made an omelet, because I was trying to scramble eggs and she called me, and by the time I got back it was solid and I was like ‘I made an omelet!’ and it was a spark of passion that never left.”
She graduated from Henderson County High School in 2012, and was a student of the high school’s culinary program in the Colonel’s Kitchen. Next, she attended culinary school at Sullivan University in Louisville and has lived and worked in Louisville, Georgia and in St. Louis as well as Evansville.
Over the years, she’s worked in fast food, a Mongolian grill and hookah bar, as the head baker at a Dunkin’ Donuts, in banquets and other capacities at a Ritz Carlton Hotel, as an exhibition cook and catering coordinator at a large hospital, and in fine dining.
Eventually, she got tired of feeling like just another body at a job and decided she wanted to start her own business, so she began Peace4U Catering, now Peace 4U Hospitality LLC.
She found a commissary kitchen, and, in 2023, started serving as a farmers market pop-up stall at the Evansville Farmer’s Market.
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Peace 4U Meal Prep
The Peace 4U meal prep menu rotates, but on each version, there are basic items such as meatloaf or smothered chicken; light choices such as roasted chicken breast or blackened salmon; a green menu of salads; and premium choices such as steak bites or chicken alfredo. Vegan meals such as chickpea meatball subs and butternut squash curry are also offered.
Peace 4U Catering
Custom menus are always available. There is a $50 nonrefundable fee to sit down with Calhoun so she can put together a menu for your event and price it for you.
Calhoun has a real community mindset also. She founded the nonprofit L.I.F.E (Love Influences Future Endeavors), and you’ll see Peace 4U involved in many community functions, often working in concert with L.I F.E. at events to provide free food. She’s also a Tepe Park Neighborhood Association leader.
In February, she and Sabor Columbia food truck hosted a giveback at the Potter’s Wheel with a free meal for anyone who needed it. Coming up on May 4, L.I.F.E will be hosting Praise in the Park Health & Wellness event (sponsored by MDwise) from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Tepe Park, 1212 S. Garvin St., where Peace 4U will be supplying a free fiesta lunch bar.
For more information about Peace 4U Hospitality LLC, visit the Facebook page or call 930-204-1358
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Jasmine Calhoun's Peace4U catering service in Evansville
