Amanda Wisth finds joy and honors her mother’s memory by cooking for others
When Amanda Wisth misses her mother most, she finds herself cooking. She lost her mother to breast cancer five years ago, and cooking and finding joy wherever she can is how she keeps her mother’s memory close.
Wisth was working as an esthetician when the pandemic hit. She couldn’t go to work, so the kitchen became her happy place, and sharing her cooking on social media kept her connected to others.
She kept at it even after she went back to work. Her charcuterie boards in particular got a lot of attention, and she started getting requests. In March 2021, she launched Lemonyay! Charcuterie + Catering.
Over the past two years, she’s been teaching charcuterie board classes and making them for others, along with doing private chef work and creating cocktail infusion kits and weekly meal prep packages. Now she’s expanding her reach a bit more, moving from operating out of her home in Shorewood to a commercial kitchen space in Bay View.
Her first pop-up dinner was in October at Blackwood Brothers Restaurant and Social Club, 3001 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. Next up is a pop-up brunch at Blackwood Brothers on Nov. 12. Look for future Lemonyay! pop-up announcements on her Instagram page ( instagram.com/lemonyayayay). Wisth also is a new chef instructor at Glorioso’s Appetito, 1011 E. Brady St., where she’s teaching several classes, including Surf ‘n Turf on New Year’s Eve. pop. Make sure everything is not just the same monochromatic color scheme. We want pops of color, freshness and seasonality, so a good salami, a good cheddar. And we want texture variation, so nuts are always an option, dried fruits for chewiness, dark chocolate for that bitterness, some fresh fruits. People want to eat pretty food.
The love I have for cooking. Seriously. That and maybe a really good knife. I have an array of Japanese knives that get me through.
We provide individual, pre-packed, cooked meals, macro-friendly. They are as organic as we can get them. It is a very grassroots ordering right now. We don’t have a website. I have a mailing list, and weekly I send out the menu. I have freshpress juices, our spin on Lunchables, both lunch and breakfast, and six different individual meal options. All can be made family-style.
It is a weekly service, but you don’t have to order weekly. We have delivery and pick-up options. You can order as little or as much as you want, but we have a delivery minimum.