The summer I was 8

I can remember being in the kitchen of Tia Fe Palma every afternoon for 2 weeks, being taught how to bake brownies and make cookies. I didn't know why until I was brought to the studio where Nora Daza's Cooking Show was shot. This was live TV, no cuts nor takes. I was being touted as the baking daughter of Gloria Y.Nichols of the Rolling Pin Bake Shop. At 8 years old at that! And during the show, I must have impressed Nora Daza as I did everything I could remember, but twas really hazy as I remember resenting time in the kitchen when I could have been out playing with cousins.Impressed that she told everyone I was going to enrol at the Manila Gas Cooking School for the summer. And before you know it, the next youngest one to me was a 16 year old. Everyone else was way older. In what I still believe was the best type of layout for a cooking school. But what does an 8 year old know?

Again, I did so well that they created a children's cooking class for the next year. Of course, I couldn't join my peers as I was put into an advanced class.
All I can remember was putting sardines on a pizza, the flavors I still cannot re-make, boiling salt instead of sugar to sweeten kaong, and , the most traumatic that made me unable to decorate cakes for many years, her assistant said in a loud aside when we were decorating cakes, I was trying to do a butterfly shaped cake "ganyan ba ang gawa ng anak ng may ari ng Rolliing Pin?"(Is that the work of the owner of Rolling Pin?)
Scarred me almost for life. I didn't decorate cakes until I got here. Even now, I never think I make great looking cakes even if I get compliments. Lesson to all, don't ever denigrate a child's efforts. It can damage them for life. It's a good thing I overcame this trauma and can actually really decorate a cake. (Although I am one of those free flow persons, always out of the box, out of the line, nothing perfect, nothing the same...AHA, one of a kind, masterpieces each one!)