“Cooking is love made visible”

by Danica Magallanes

              “A recipe has no soul, you as a cook must bring soul to the recipe”.

      This is the favorite quote uttered by a nineteen year old girl, Jhessa Senados whose heart was wrapped by her passion in cooking. Pouring her heart wholly motivates this young girl to continue her hobby as she puts her inspirations in every dish she cook.

            Cooking as her hobby in a day to day life became her habitual drug. She was truly deep in love of eating, the reason why cooking became her hobby from the delicious adobo, tinola, and to the mouthwatering chicken curry and chicken cordon brue as her specialty. Even though she had almost cooked everything but there is one thing she doesn’t like to cook. It is a limbless cold-blooded vertebrate animal with gills and fins and living wholly in water, literally a fish. For her, the momentum of deboning and cleaning the fish before cooking really leave a mark of a strong smelly odor that passes through her nose going to her lungs, making her to feel awful and dizzy. A forceful statement from her that never in her whole life she will cook fish again. This is the reason why through years, this young girl avoided to cook any recipe including fish or the fish itself. This was the reason that imprisoned her to the four walled kitchen room leaving her with limitations and boundaries in cooking. When the time her dad was diagnosed with a certain illness, the breeze of the air change. When her father, Efren Senados wished if Jhessa can make a recipe of fish for him, in no doubts, a girl known as the fish hater gave her best in cooking the best recipe of fish she could have. Perseverance and effort was used as ingredients as she cooked the best fish soup in the whole world. This was the turning point of Jhessa in loving how to cook fish and loving the passion of cooking making her dad as one of the influential person who inspired Jhessa a lot.

While she is cooking

       The things that Jhessa had learned from her experiences became her stepping stone to put her heart wholly in cooking. That weakness that hinders her turns into her strength that pushed her to enter the world of business. From an ordinary girl to a business minded one. Establishing a confidence cooking and selling foods like yema, mani, sampalok and many others lead this girl to enhance her hobby. This is the result of the undying influence of her father that has strong impact to her life. A lifetime words of wisdom to be cherished through the love of a daughter and father relationship they have.

             This is no ordinary hobby if you yourself know how to love and accept it as a whole. Learn to appreciate, improve and be positive on what things you are doing because you don’t know someday your hobby may lead you to success.