“I wish this part of our lives came with a detailed manual, because it is only by the grace of God I am still surviving.
If you’re like me, the first word that comes to mind is adulting, right?
My first question is, ‘Why are things getting so expensive?’ The other day while the cashier was scanning stuff I got from the store my heart just kept dropping after every scan. I could feel my chest dip when I saw the price I had to pay.
For some products, the price change is very subtle and gradual but by the time you combine all you have bought you will realise you have spent more than you budgeted for. May God help us ‘cause omo things are becoming unbecoming.
Well, inflation story aside. I am a 3rd year student at the university. I have a food and pastry business I do every weekend and that’s because I am mostly busy with schoolwork during the week.
I start prepping ingredients for my orders on Thursday. I do all the shopping myself and on Saturday morning I wake up early to prepare the orders.
So far, I’ll say the profits I make are just normal. Nothing jaw-dropping or life-changing. I am constantly facing the issue of getting customers because most of them are Africans and familiar with my menu so it can get monotonous.
But I try to keep the quality high and because my food hits back to back (if I may say so myself), they keep coming back : )
On this fateful Saturday, I woke up as usual at 6:00 am, dragged myself to the kitchen and started cooking. I mixed the dough for my puff-puff (a deep-fried sweet pastry) and left it for about 30 minutes to rise. I came back and started frying.
After popping the first batch in the oil, nothing looked amiss and I just turned them on their sides to get brown. Like 5 mins later some of them started looking odd, like they just didn’t look like my puff-puff. I continued frying sha.
A few minutes passed and I just scooped them out of the oil. I left them to cool while I added the second batch and continued frying the rest of the batter. After a while, I was left with only one batch to go. I picked one of the pieces I had fried to taste and checked it.
As you’d anticipated, all was not well. The puff for some reason was so oily and tasteless, it was just not right in my mouth. Mind you, I was not a newbie to this, all the alarms in my head started going off.
What did I do wrong? Where did I miss it? It was like my village people finally got me today because I always taste after the first batch to adjust things, for some weird reason I didn’t do that this time. Today of all days- when I have one of the biggest orders…
I stared at the big bowl of puff-puff I had made and it stared back at me. Gosh, I was really mad on the inside but I tried to keep my calm. I called my friends and they started eating them one by one. They all thought the puff-puff was okay.
A few of them were fine, but my friends bought the rest that were not okay. I was so grateful for them at that moment. I was able to salvage some of my remaining customers.
The moral of my short story is that even if you’re a master at something, there are days that it might not come together and that is okay. Till today, I still don’t know what I did wrong.
It is also important to have the right people in your circle, my friends didn’t just buy, they also encouraged me that stuff like that happens sometimes. I was so comforted by their words that day because God knows I would have lost it if I was just alone.
I have a lot of food stories to share. In fact, I remember that time hot oil spilt on the middle of my forehead and I walked around for weeks looking like an Indian with a decorative mark on my forehead. All in all, the hustle is real and the hustle pays so we will keep pushing.
Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful week and may your hustle bring gains.”
#ESolutionsDeyForYou
