Jayne Whyte's Portfolio

This is my first post on ‘Thankful Thursday’.

It’s amazing how time flies. The other day as a child, I was cooking vegetable soup in a rusted tin tomato tin and had sand as eba and grasses as vegetables and now I cook real meals, the kind you eat and will almost eat your fingers  in the process (I dey try sha!)……after how many years of  experience……I wish I could put that in my C.V.

I remember years ago, I would prepare a meal it’s either that it would be very salty, spicy or with lots of pepper…..and watch my dad shake his head, and close his eyes while swallowing the food (I am sure he was saying “Oh God, may this girl never disgrace me in future oh….and God will say Amen!) and my brothers will just eat the food……those guys, they never complained even when I baked stone thinking it was bread. I used a cook book mixed all the ingredients, GBAM! it came out as strong as stone…..since they had perceived the aroma from the oven they just couldn’t wait to taste it and when it did come out of the oven…..I was really ashamed…..but proud of my family because they still wanted to taste it.



I got better as years passed, getting more experienced in the kitchen, learning from friends, reading cook books, watching food network and learning from one of the best cooks in the world…my husband!. During our first year of marriage, I remember preparing a meal, and to my surprise it wasn’t pleasing to the eyes and to the mouth…for love’s sake I dished it out and for love’s sake he had to eat it….hehehehe and when after the first spoon, he asked “what type of soup is this?” and I said “well, it’s our village recipe….when the white man came to our village, this was what we used to welcome him”…..and that settled it.

After years of disasters….imagine frying eggs with Tin Tomatoes…I have come out in flying colours….I bake cakes for weddings, birthdays and other events when my clients call, I cook wonderfully well with a lot of confidence, even my kids enjoy my cooking. I am thankful that I didn’t have to burn the house to learn how to prepare a decent meal, I made my ‘crazy mistakes’ which of course made me stronger and I learnt from them.