I love to cook, and that is official. My maternal grandmother, Mama Okene, and my mum, Mrs Josephine Awawu Amodu, were award-winning chefs in their own right, and I learned from them while adding my signature. In fact, we were never short of guests in our home, and we were always cooking and giving a twist to an old meal. We also never lacked ingredients, hence my love for markets wherever I go. Fresh produce, finds, surprises, sightseeing, new supplies, and running into old friends. Markets deliver the aforementioned and more. I am a huge fan of markets. But when it comes to cooking, I am hardly one to eat my words. I have never had a measuring spoon in my kitchen. I do everything in the kitchen by ear. Although I am an addict of cookery books, as I grow older, I hardly use them to cook, and in rare instances when I do, I change the recipes a bit. A little sprinkle of something else in it and maybe a different method of cooking the recipe. I love kitchens; they are labs for massive experiments, and trust me, once the produce is fresh, most mixes turn out great, and the aroma is something else. But in a bid not to overwhelm your family oozing and aching through an overdose of curry or too much paprika, you really do need to go easy on the experiments. And you have to make them for yourself first. You must be the guinea pig. You have to slowly become an expert as I am. All combined, an expert on traditional menus, modern contemporary ones, international ones, and some special mixes. I truly have become a guru and a gourmet chef. I am loving life. I love to feed friends and family, and I am always looking for an excuse to entertain. When everyone is munching away, with happy smiles, chit chats, and happy laughter, I become a truly great hostess. When they say, What did you put in this? It’s incredibly delicious… My day is made. As a result of this ability to dive into foods, I am currently writing a cookbook. Hopefully, in a year or two, but sooner than you think. But the interesting part of my cooking and my writing is that I hardly measure anything. I sprinkle salt in a pot of stew and egusi, and my children are gobsmacked. Same with pepper or any spice. I don’t measure the water. When my kids were younger, they could not fathom it. How did you know how much salt to put, Mum? I just instinctively knew. Crayfish powder and other spices – I tip from the container. I just knew, as did my mum, who taught me, and my grandmother before her. The salt was never too little or too much. Read also: Are you eating too much salt? Looking back, I just wondered how I got here. Never measuring the ingredients nor my words. I don’t do two teaspoons of salt, half a spoon of crayfish or a cooking spoon of groundnut oil kind of thing. I just go with the flow. Same with my writing. I don’t write an outline or gauge the words; I just pour my heart on the page. Raw, gutsy, flowery, or sad. It depends on the place and my mood. I don’t know if being a poet allows me to have poetic licence or if being a lifestyle writer is responsible, or maybe because I am that writer in a hurry to put words to the page. My writing often has no form or structure at the beginning, but then it all comes together through practice and consistency, and now it’s like fine wine, even if I say so myself. I have paid my writing dues, but I am an eternal learner, and I keep polishing my craft. I was inspired for this column by an essay written by Daria Lavelle at lithub.com titled Eating your words, in defence of writing without a recipe, which captured both my cooking and writing essence completely. As kindred spirits are wont to be, one would have thought she was my writing and cooking twin from another mother. I read it with great joy in my heart. It was as if she knew me and my writing and cooking processes. In her now viral essay, she says, “This is how I cook – not by recipe but by intuition. By feeling. By experimentation. ” She gets me completely. She says she lets instinct lead her in her other creative endeavours, just like me. I read this essay, well written in that “let me put something down” way that speaks to me that gets me writing every day. She says her daily kitchen habit is to pretend that she’s a Chopped contestant, Chopped being one of the more famous cooking TV shows. But let’s be fair, those eternally arrogant chefs on a lot of these shows have nothing on us. I mean, they are damn good, but some of them… Hmmm. I certainly cook better than some in my humble kitchen. So the next time you see me sprinkling salt with my bare hands in a pot of Ob’egwa, the traditional bean stew of my Igala ethnic stock, you know I am about to turn up a truly memorable meal of Eba and Ob’egwa, Eugenia style. As for the cookbook, it’s coming. And if you visit me and you are in luck, you may be able to have a taste of my Jollof rice ranch-style. You are welcome!