3 minute read
Picky Home Crowd Inspires Tasty Takeout at Avec Moi
Kris Parmelee was not always this into food. As a working mom of three boys, she often found herself with no time at the end of the day to cook a healthy meal. She and her husband got used to zigzagging around town, picking up fast food and carryout meals to satisfy all five palates in her family.
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And she wasn’t happy about it.
An idea was born. And like so many ideas, it was born out of necessity. Why not create a service that offers to-go meals for the health-minded?
Today, Parmelee runs that service, called Avec Moi. She makes and sells to-go food on weekdays from her Broad Ripple storefront at 62nd Street and College Avenue.
As an avid recipe collector with a penchant for nutrition and simplicity, Parmelee has a knack for creating dishes that make people feel nourished. Her repertoire includes rich, creamy Butternut squash lasagna, Asian-style ribs, orange-pistachio bulgar, green salads topped with roasted red pepper vinaigrette, even heavenly coconut cake and fudgy brownies.
While Parmelee has no formal culinary training, she has exactly what she needs to create food that people want to buy: some trusted recipes, a passion for cooking and an approach to food that resonates with the people in her community.
“I like clean food,” she says. So she devised a plan to start cooking clean, healthy meals that people could buy and take home. In early 2011, she rented out space to cook at Indy’s Kitchen one afternoon a week, and would send emails to her friends and network about what dishes she’d be preparing and when they would be ready for pickup.
As her business began to grow, Parmelee decided to jump in with both feet. She left her job as a fundraising consultant to open an Avec Moi storefront last summer. She chose the name, which means “with me” in French, as she began sharing her passion for food with her customers.
Every weekday, Parmelee offers a variety of freshly prepared, organic, healthy and often local dishes. The menu is posted daily on her website, happygofoodie.com, and orders can be placed online with a selected pickup time, or called in, or picked up on the spot. Each Sides and salads are about $4, with entrees ranging from $7 to $12. Portions are individually packaged and adorned with labels specifying cooking or serving instructions, following a list of ingredients. Special orders for larger quantities are available by calling ahead.
The seasons dictate her menu, and Parmelee relies heavily on local farmers, including Fischer Farms for beef and pork and FarmIndy (formerly Seldom Seen Farms) for produce.
“I try to use organic ingredients wherever I can, and local ingredients where it makes sense,” she says.
The kitchen at Avec Moi isn’t so different from the kitchen at the Parmelee house, where dinner needs to please some choosy eaters.
“While some kids are adventurous eaters, mine are not,” she says of her boys, ages 7–11.
Many of her kids’ favorite dishes are loaded with vegetables that Parmelee has learned to expertly “hide” by mixing them into sauces and ground meats. In the summers, her family spends much of their time poolside, enlisting the grill for cooking quick lunches and dinners.
It’s this creativity and passion for simple flavors that continues to make people fall in love with her food. Speculating on the direction of Avec Moi, Parmelee says she would love to expand on the concept, possibly opening another location in the future. But for the time being, she intends to continue building on her original ideas and recipes, learning as she goes.
BY CAROLINE MOSEY • PHOTO BY CHRISTINA RICHEY
