The day I cooked nonsense!

I must have been 15 at the time.

Our next door neighbour had his son visiting from college, with a cousin and a friend. So, there were 3 boys next door. One of them was kind of good looking, while the other two, I am not so sure about right now.

One evening we were all hanging out and I mentioned that I had to go home and make dinner. “Hmmm, dinner”, they echoed, ‘’What are you making?”, ‘’Can we have some?” Basically, their host wasn’t cooking and they were tired of eating junk. So, I declared that I was making jollof rice and fried plantain with beef, and offered to bring them some. That was the beginning of a nightmare that haunted me for a long time.

Arriving home, I was both nervous about feeding these boys, and petrified about how I was going to get their food out before my dad got home from work. I started to cook the same jollof that I had cooked so many times before. For reasons I cannot explain today or ever, I put crayfish in it which I never did before, and then too much of it! I couldn’t start all over, so I was going to serve it.

I was short on time. I had sliced the plantains too thickly, as a result, when I fried it, it wasn’t cooked all the way through, but I didn’t know at the time. The fried meat was glitch free thankfully.

I loaded a bowl of food for the boys and took it next door and came home feeling like a great neighbour. A few minutes later, they showed with an almost empty bowl of foods and loads of cruel comments and jokes:  ‘’So you can’t fry plantain!”; ‘’Is that crayfish in your jollof?’’; ‘’At least the meat was manageable!” And it went on, as I collected my bowl and entered my house. It took all my will power not to cry!  It’s safe to say I did not see them again till they were gone.

So why did I tell this story?

That incident put a big damper on my passion for cooking. My dad was home that night and ate the food without complaining, so I couldn’t rely on his comments. He was too kind to me. Or maybe I was not that good at making jollof, anyway. Or, as my mum would often say, dad loves rice so much he would eat it any form!

I became extra nervous each time I had to feed people who didn’t live in my house. My housemates always ate my food and tried to be kind, so each time a visitor was coming, I became nervous.

This drama took a few years to resolve and I got over it, because I was feeding more and  more people and they were loving it.

So, guys, if you cook nonsense today, be kind to yourself and keep working on it.

Please comment with your own cooking disasters and I really want to read them.

Cheers,

-AJ