Hi, my name is Dorcas Garba, owner of Dee’s Mealz. I’m the second born in a family of 8. Long queue right? I was born in the 1990s in Nigeria and still live here.
My first cooking was at the age of 10. I remember my first meal was Tuwon Masara.
That faithful day, I and my elder sister returned from school and she forgot about cooking for us to eat and mum wasn’t home. She just dropped her bag, changed her clothes, and began playing with our neighbor’s kids (we were living in a compound house then). The foodie that I am(yes o… my love for food didn’t start today), I became very hungry and kept complaining but my sister didn’t pay attention to me.
So, I decided to on the stove and put water in a pot, and set it on heat. I didn’t even sieve the maize flour, just mixed it and made the paste, and turned it into the boiling water. My God the paste was so thick and not long after I just added the maize flour and did all the mixing.
After mixing, I set it down from heat and just packed it from the pot. Hah! It was so strong that a person would feel the pain if it was thrown at them. I enjoyed my food oh after cooking it and my sister got all the shouting from my mum that day.
I didn’t give up, I kept trying and today, I can say I am doing great with cooking.
As a kid, I dreamt about pursuing a lot of professions like Accounting, Teaching, being a Veterinarian (family line), being a Nurse, a Musician, an Actress, a Dancer… many dreams right? I know.
As I was going growing up, I got to realize that I am more of a practical person, I like seeing how things are done, not just being told.
Well, I grew up and after completing my Secondary School in 2011, I was home waiting to get accepted into a University.
In the year 2015, I got accepted at the Institute of Computing and ICT, ABU Zaria to get a Diploma in Computer Science. In the second year of the Diploma program, I made a lot of friends and got to learn new things along the way.
During my Diploma days, I stayed in the hostel and got to meet ladies that knew little about cooking, which made them junk food consumers (I know sometimes those are great too) or constantly buying from restaurants on campus.
The guys are also not left behind, some guys find it hard to cook, not that they aren’t good at it, but they just don’t like it. I believe that guys cook the best.
Everyone has the passion in them (the passion to cook really good recipes) and it’s just a matter of figuring out how to go about it.
After finishing my Diploma program, I got accepted to get a BSc. in Computer Science at Ahmadu Bello University in 2016.
I dreamt and thought of cooking nice dishes a lot, but it never crossed my mind to own a website. I didn’t even know how, until a friend brought the idea during our Industrial Training in 2018.
He told me, “why not start a blog on teaching people how to cook Nigerian recipes”
I bought the idea because nowadays, everyone is online, and creating a website to help those out there who want to learn how to make really tasty dishes was a great idea.
So I started working on it and got a lot of help from him in the process of maintaining the security of the website, the interface, and lots more.
With time I began to understand how it was done before I started to populate the website with recipes and upgrade the website design.
Working on the website and schooling was very hard, but I kept on trying even though I wasn’t posting as much as I wanted to.
Eventually, I made my first YouTube video on 26 April 2019, even though I didn’t appreciate the video till later on because I didn’t have the right utensils and video gear to use. It took time before I recorded the second video and the third video, I edited them, and so on….
I am now a graduate and I plan to do this full time. So, stick around and enjoy as there will be plenty to choose from.