I’ve never been the kind to sleep in on weekends or other days. Yes, I love a good rest, I don’t like stress at all and if I could sit and cross my legs all year long and still have everything going smoothly for me, I would. But life doesn’t work that way so we do what we have to do to keep things moving.

Sleeping in late is but a far fetched dream for me. For the past two years, it’s been an impossible mission. Right from my first year, I’ve always had classes on Saturdays so this made it impossible to sleep in late. Weekends are like the only days I’ve got to myself as a student yet some lecturers still chose to deprive me and other students of the early hours of it.
Apart from classes, there’s laundry to take care of and cleaning to do. The weekend is also a good chance to plan and prepare a better meal.
As a devoted Christian, Sunday is also not a day to sleep in late. As a worker in the church, it’s equally mandatory to be in church before 7:30am. Walking in late is not even an option.

^{Dressed Up For The Lord🤗}

Getting to third year, I’ve been lucky to not have a lot of weekend classes but I’ve not been opportuned to sleep in late either due to my business. Last weekend, I really thought I would, until I woke up around 3am on Saturday to a friend’s text requesting that I make him two plates of rice and local palm fruit sauce. I honestly could have said say no, rather I put out my menu again on my WhatsApp status to see if any other person would need my service because cooking for one person isn’t very profitable. This is how my life has been for over one month. It’s been school on weekdays and cooking on weekends.

^{Saturday’s Menu}

Prior to this day, an acquaintance had gotten into town on Wednesday from my hometown. We met briefly on Thursday and he was willing to support my business by patronizing. The only problem was that he couldn’t wait for the weekend to order the food I intended to sell so he had to make a bulk order.
Since he had no means of storing, we had to settle for something I was willing to eat too. That’s how we picked coconut rice. I was to deliver the food on Friday at 6pm.

It was meant to be a stressless process since I’ve got an electric blender and we have constant power supply. Unluckily for me, there was no electricity when I got back from school to begin preparation. I waited till 4:45pm and delivery was 6pm. I couldn’t take chances so I began to grate the coconuts. It was a long process, I moved delivery to 7:30PM. Hurriedly, I prepared everything I needed and the food was ready by 7:30. Started cleaning and washing up all the utensils I used, my shoulders hurt from the grating and my finger got bruised. It was only natural of me to go to bed early. I had already fantasized sleeping in late and waking up by 12pm on Saturday since I had no orders for the weekend. Not until I woke up during the early hours of Saturday to see that I had an order so my plan was shattered.

^{The Coconut Rice I delivered on Friday}

I should have said no but since I’m new in the business, I have to keep tolerating a few excesses like late orders because I want to give a lot of people the chance to know my brand and taste my food.

^{Market Girl}

^{Ingredients used for last weekends cooking}

So on Saturday, I set out very early around 7am to the market to purchase all I needed for my cooking: palmfruits, rice, some cow skin, beef, local flavor spice Okpeyi, some veggies, pepper etc. Got back and swung into action immediately. By 2:30pm the stew was ready and I dished them and went on to prepare the rice. By 4:30pm, delivery was done and I began to tidy up my space.