{"id":208540,"date":"2019-09-05T16:33:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T20:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/?page_id=208540"},"modified":"2019-09-09T11:35:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:35:55","slug":"sandra-mcneil-rodgers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/womens-entrepreneurship-week-2020\/wew-at-montclair-state\/sandra-mcneil-rodgers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandra McNeil Rodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Founder | SoulBites<\/h2>\n<div class=\"prpl-row\"><div class=\"prpl-column one-fifth\">\n<figure class=\"responsive-image-holder wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"mlt-responsive-image\" data-original-image=\"\/entrepreneur\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2019\/09\/Sandis_portrait_highres-3.jpg\" src=\"\/responsive-media\/cache\/entrepreneur\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2019\/09\/Sandis_portrait_highres-3.jpg.0.1x.generic.jpg\" alt=\"Rodgers\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div><div class=\"prpl-column four-fifths\">Sandra McNeil Rodgers, or &#8220;Chef Sandi,&#8221; is founder of SoulBites, head chef and an Institute of Culinary Arts graduate. Sandi always dreamed of opening a restaurant.\u00a0As a teenager\u00a0she moved from Tompkins Projects in Brooklyn to live with her grandparents in a little southeastern Georgia town called Statesboro. There she spent a great deal of her summers learning to purchase feed for the family&#8217;s livestock as well as curing and storing meats for winter months. She learned to can and preserve peaches and make delicious watermelon rind preserves following her grandmother\u2019s\u00a0recipes.\u00a0Fresh vegetables from her grandparents\u2019 garden were transformed into flavorful dinner and supper dishes as Chef Sandi would &#8220;revamp&#8221; each recipe as she still does today in the family restaurant and catering business. As she was allowed to cook for her grandparents, it became evident that her scrumptious comfort food dishes not only satisfied their hunger, but did something to their soul. Her grandmother, a private chef for many years, believed soul food wasn&#8217;t &#8220;ethnic&#8221; cooking, but a patient, intentional process of cooking each dish with love and soul. She helped kick-start Chef Sandi&#8217;s love of cooking. Sandi\u00a0inherited her grandmother\u2019s ability to &#8220;scratch out&#8221; a recipe from any ingredients she had on hand, without measuring or making waste but somehow cooking enough for everyone who took a seat at\u00a0the table. This would come in handy years later when Chef Sandi had a family of her own and served dishes for family and friends with very little provisions or ingredients available.\u00a0The original concept behind Sandi\u2019s (also known as Sandi\u2019s SoulBites) is based on her \u201cwastes not, want not\u201d belief.\u00a0Dishes are prepared in portion sizes providing delicious bites to satisfy even the most picky\u00a0eater. Chef Sandi cooks with the same love and soul for each customer as she does for her family.\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founder | SoulBites<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":208618,"parent":56,"menu_order":19,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-208540","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208610,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208540\/revisions\/208610"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/56"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}