FROM DUTY TO LOVING
- A bite that leaves your taste buds demanding for more -
Cooking never started as an interest… it started as a “duty” …
Cooking and taking charge of the kitchen was a duty that came early to me, being the oldest girl-child in the house and being away from our parents. Between the ages of 12 and 14, I tried out all that my little self could imagine in the blending of condiments, learning as I did, to appeal to a tropical palette. By the time I was 15, I had moved from duty to interest – an interest in pastry making. Thankfully, we lived with our mother at the time. Seeing my deep interest and desire to create a niche for myself in pastries, besides my general cooking skills, my mother doled out her support. She provided all that I need; from ingredients, to utensils, to needed supplies and her supportive motherly warmth.
From general duty, I had grown an interest, and through my continuous practice in making different baked goodies, my heart was drawn deeper into the desire to see someone smile at every bite they took from my pastries. Now I was in this full-blown love affair with baking pastries. The smiles that came forth from the sensation of a tasty pastry – especially my famous Nigerian Pies – hitting the taste buds of friends and families, and later customers, spelt satisfaction and gratitude in me. It was worth every second spent in kneading the dough and more so, the joy it brought transcended my content-self and paid even greater homage to my roots – NIGERIA. And so, besides baking bread, shortbread cookies, Nigerian buns (snack), Nigerian pies and many more; my Nigerian Pies were the most famous, as it pulled demands from across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Prior to 2010, these demands to bake couples of dozens of pies were simply those from friends and extended family members who knew from experience the quality of the pastries I made. In fact, they were mostly done freewill through requests from my mother. It was never “business” and exchange for my service was: “Thank you, Sade.” Of course, side comments, suggestions and the typical unsolicited counsel of aunts and uncles sold the idea of beginning a business around making of pastries. However, to add the baking of Nigerian pies and other pastries – knowing how time consuming they can be – to the intensity of work-life-balance in the United States was something that enveloped me with fear, coupled with other crippling fears of the “Failure-What-Ifs”. I knew I could deliver, but I was not sure why I did not take my shot. Until a faithful day, were I saw a post requesting a vendor to make baked Nigerian pastries or snacks. Then it hit me like a bag of bricks, as my mind wrestled with fearful questions and counter-questions that answered in response:
What if you took your shot and you missed? What if they do not like your pastries?
What if you took your shot and you hit the target? What is they love your pastries?
Then the decision was made in me: Yes, if you shoot, you could miss… but unless you shoot, you can never the hit the target. And so it was, that I took my shot, putting myself out there in the mix of established vendors and bakers. It was the first time I ventured into exchanging my services for contracted payment. It was the first time, my cooking duty-turned-interest-turned-love was being paid for as a transaction. Needless, to say the feedbacks were other “customers” who came placing demands from references given by others whose taste buds testified to the quality and goodness of what they eaten. This was the beginning of TreatsBySade that has now gained popularity among Young Professionals, Black Communities, Tech. Events – like Africans at Google Events and many more, as we look to expand wider into the Bay Area and beyond… offering pastry bites that leaves a taste bud demanding for more.