Sugar, spice and everything nice...

  I love to cook. But things weren’t always like this. At the age of 16 when my mother forced me out of the living room to go watch how ugali is made those were words I thought would never cross my lips. I was annoyed and bored and she thought that what she was making me do was important. So night after night while I was on holiday I stood behind our house-help as she prepared our supper. Eventually I was required to help out by cutting veggies and stuff, and I still remember the raw burnt disaster that was my first chapatti. Sweaty skin and burnt fingers later all I had to show for my labour wasn’t even edible. Needless to say that killed my psyche for a while.

   And then I discovered baking... I am that girl who has a weakness for all things baked. Cakes, cookies, sausage rolls you name it! And I also discovered this magazine in high school called ‘Tupike’. You see, I sat at the very back of my class where I was surrounded by home science students (I personally dropped the subject because I HATE sewing). So they’d come to class with the mag and it had all these amazing recipes that made your mouth water (This did not go down well with my tummy considering my public boarding school diet) and looked ridiculously easy to follow. So we’d literally get out pen and paper to jot them down, then when we went for the holidays we’d try them out and we’d compare notes when we got back to school. *sigh*. So cooking became a kind of fun thing that bonded me and my pals.

My first black-forest cake...

   Now at the beginning of this blog-post I mentioned that I was exiled to the kitchen at the age of 16. Well, when I cleared high school my mother officially retired from the kitchen (I kid you not! I can count on my fingers the number of times she’s stepped into the kitchen since then...benefits of having children and all...) I suppose that practice makes perfect so I’m going to go out of character here and toot my own horn a bit, yes, I think I’m a decent cook. Now my dear feminist friends or acquaintances or whatever, there’s no need for you to start campaigning about gender equality and the like because this post is not about the battle of the sexes. I just think that it’s important, regardless of whether you have an XX or XY chromosome, for anyone who’s over the age of 18 and plans on living on their own at some point to have a few basic survival skills, especially when it comes to something as simple as making sure you don’t starve to death. And for the guys, knowing how to cook actually gives you points (#Just-saying).

   So since it’s still January feel free to add this onto your resolutions!  And if you’re actually serious about this I’ll leave you with this link of one of my favourite cooking sites: 100% Kenyan, 100% practical recipes and overwhelming variety, so have fun!

http://pikachakula.com/

Ciao...