ARE YOU HUNGRY???

I was 8 years old the first time I cooked a meal completely unsupervised.

It was a thing to boast about — especially because it was unplanned. I came home from school with my siblings to find the big food flask where our lunch was always kept completely empty. Mom wasn’t home. As the oldest, it fell to me to do something.

Just picture 8-year-old me, stoking the firewood in a soot-blackened kitchen shared by six other families, pounding crayfish and fresh peppers in a wooden mortar. I did ask an older neighbour to confirm some ingredient measurements, but in the end, it came out better than I expected — and Mom was pleased.

Riding on the high of that one-off success, I decided I was a professional chef. Not long after, I had a delicious plantain pottage at my cousin’s place, and I wouldn’t stop badgering my mom to let me replicate it.

To cut the story short, I succeeded… in producing a palm oil sea. (Yes — a very salty sea.) It was a complete flop. That’s when I realised I didn’t actually know how to cook. I had just been riding on beginner’s luck.

As I grew into my teens, my mom began to rely on me more and more for household meals. I made mistakes, I burned food, I added too much pepper, I undercooked beans — but with every attempt, I got better. Today, I can confidently hold my own in any cooking competition.

And honestly? Learning to cook taught me the exact same lesson I’m learning now as I grow in coding and web development:

The first win doesn’t mean mastery. The recipe for real skill is patience, practice, and persistence.

Whether it’s in the kitchen or in code, the process is the same — you try, you fail, you adjust, you try again. You keep showing up, and one day, the thing that once felt complicated becomes second nature.

So if you’re learning a skill and feeling frustrated, don’t mistake a lack of instant perfection for a broken brain. Skills — like recipes — take time to master. Keep cooking. Keep coding.