My Love of Cooking & How it began

I can remember as a young girl. I was always fascinated with the art of cooking. I had my play stove. It wasn't one with the whole sink, microwave and kitchen windows lol. But it was a cheaper priced one. Even so I felt it was even better than the baby ones with the sink from Fisher Price. You see I was a big girl. I was eight. Unlike the age four recommended age range for the Kitchen set. Although it was a lone stove. It was a real replica of the actual thing. the burners, I can remember like it was yesterday. The stove was a blue color, with hints of grey. Four electric burners with the little swirls.

See it wasn't a wooden stove, and it wasn't mediocre. It didn't have painted pretend flames, or black rings painted around and around and around, like targets on a dart board game. The burners were actually three-dimensional. It was equipped with pots and it was all I needed. I kept my beloved stove so clean. I'd come home and "cook"

I'd go outside in the backyard and in the area and pick what I called "poison berries". The red little gooey berries I found on bushes. Inedible as far as I was concerned. But good for pretending. :)

So I'd come home from exploring the yards with a bag full of twigs, tree bark, branches and famous poison berries. I'd turn on my "stove", turning the knobs to "medium" envisioning a flame lol.
And cook my berries. I unlike usual kids liked putting real ingredients on my stove to cook. Even pine cones.


When I was younger I would spend hours on end in the kitchen. Trying to make my own homemade bread. I would get so much flour and food coloring and eggs and whisk it up, adding milk too and oil. Recipes I came up with myself. I would whisk it until it got this thick, cottage-cheesy texture.

Then I'd line a pan with cooking spray and put my "cake" in the oven. Careful not to forget the sugar and salt. I was onto something lol. But, ultimately when it came out. It was of course inedible. I kept wondering why the dough wouldn't rise. So when I went to the grocery store I spotted yeast rising in a packet. I said aloud hmm. This must be what I need to make my cakes come alive!

I come from a family of cooks My paternal uncle is a pastry chef and caterer. In Guyana and now America.
My mother always had me in the kitchen side by side with her. Baking was one of our favorite mother and daughter bonding exercises. So there we were in our aprons. Baking pillsbury sugar cookies. Sometimes we'd buy the dough in the freezer section that was ready to bake. But I also found great joy in mixing the cookie batter from "scratch". Adding eggs, oil, etc. I remember how the oil once added would trickle down into the mixture. It looked so interesting to me. I'd stare as I watched it fall into the white clumpy mix, the vegetable oil's yellow color joining into the batch.

I'd lick the whisk and sometimes I'd wonder if I'd get salmonella from the raw eggs. lol.
I can remember racing to the baking aisles in the 99 cent store and my local C-town supermarket. I was on a mission to find all the different varieties of sprinkles. Sugar sprinkles, regular multicolored sprinkles.

Every holiday I longed for the holiday themed cookies. Halloween had the orange scary pumpkin faces on the cookies. Valentines day had the hearts and Christmas had snowmen and reindeers.
There was Easter and Thanksgiving too.

When we'd get fancy and buy our stencils and cut tree shapes into the cookies, hearts, you name it.

I watched my grandmother's on both sides mother and father. Cook everything from scratch step, by step. But it wasn't until around age sixteen that I really started to get this real interest in cooking. I started by trying to mimick meals that I had eaten before. My favorites chicken parmesan was one of them.

I'd get spinach and sautee it, then i'd bread my chicken breast, then I'd add tomato sauce and boil my pasta, then add it in. I was proud of myself, I was well on my way.

Day by day my passion for cooking intensified. Once on my own at age seventeen I had to learn how to cook entirely for myself. I would spend hours and hours cooking and cooking. By age eighteen I progressed into more and more sophisticated meals. By then I had begun cooking for my family. I was so thrilled to watch them chowing down on my food.

At nineteen, that's when I knew I had a concrete love for culinary. An appreciation. Cooking became a way to release for me. A way to bond with others, a way to show love through the hard work and dedication I put into my recipes.

I would cook for my neighbors and friends. They were in awe. But, I couldn't understand why cause to me it came so natural. My ability. Yet, still they seemed so stunned.

At the age of twenty my cooking skills became greater and I began to idolize Chef Gordon Ramsey and Marcus Samuelsson. I begun my mornings with shows like Top Chef, Chopped, MasterChef, Kitchen Nightmares etc.

Cooking became my life. I was always in the kitchen. My friends longed for my dishes.
I would dream about competing on those shows, judged by the greatest. But, now I would like to make it a reality.

Last year, and idea came to me that I wanted to start a youtube channel. In which I would upload tutorial and instructional videos on my cooking process and technique. Well, January of this year I stopped making excuses and went ahead and did it. I have a cooking page, youtube channel. I started a catering company in which I cater small scale events. I even plan to start doing instructional classes at events soon. I have my business cards and all.

So far I've catered two events and even have been receiving requests. I'm very excited to be embarking on this journey.