One

MAKING SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING

What is excellent is always beautiful.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL

Miko, Miko, wake up! Ive cracked the nut!Those were the words shouted by my sister, startling me out of a deep sleep. As I blinked a few times, slowly taking in the harsh light, she came into focus. Her beaming face said it all.Not one prone to exaggeration, Titi was a serious woman and did not excite easily or without cause. I knew that this was an important moment.After months of our experimenta-tion, using our Brooklyn brownstone kitchen as a test lab, Titi had every right to wake me up to celebrate. Standing over my bed, she was holding up a version of the hairstyling cream that

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we had been trying for many months to get just right. As she swirled the mixture around and rubbed it between her thumb and index fingers, holding it up to my nose for a sniff, I could tell that everything about it was perfect.

The smell took me right back to the warm kitchen of Miss Jessie, our grandmother.

MIKO, GO GET ME THAT POT! ordered Miss Jessie from the central command post of her kitchen table. No, not that one. The one with the black handle, to the left! she corrected, peering up at me while never missing a beat at her chopping board as she cut onions and celery into fine, even pieces. Titi, aint you done peeling them potatoes yet? Miss Jessie raised her voice, this time at my sister. Cmon now, we cant keep waiting on you. You know I got to get my turkey in the oven, and then make my pies, too.

Making that potato salad was like a military operation. Any stray grandchild who wandered into her kitchen was put to work, fetching, peeling, and mixing to help her produce the most delicious meals, made with love, experience, and an un-erring sense of what worked. This was where the magic hap-pened. Our paternal grandmothers house in Poughkeepsie, New York, was the center of our lives, and her kitchen table was where Titi and I absorbed our greatest life lessons. It was the place where we were fed the incredible food and wisdom that would nourish and sustain us well into adulthood.

One of those lessons was how to make the best product possible, whether it was potato salad, sweet potato pie, or yellow cake batter. Miss Jessie never compromised. Her in-

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gredients had to be the best. She used to go shopping every weekend at a local farmers market called Adams; that hapless store manager must have braced himself whenever he saw her coming. Miss Jessie used to inspect the potatoes as if they were fine diamonds, scrutinizing each flaw. For her salad, each one had to look good, with as few brown spots as possible. They had to be fresh, just dug up from the soil, and with her keen sense of smell, she could always tell. They also had to be the right color, weight, and consistency. She preferred the waxy yellow kind from Idaho, which held up best to boiling and mixing and had the most flavor. But she wasnt going to pay top dollar for them. Heck, no! Watching Miss Jessie bar-gain the store staff down on price made us wish we had her in Washington, working on the next international trade deal or peace treaty. She was that good.

Once she got her ingredients home, chopped, and pre-pared, it was all about the mixing. For the potato salad, she always used the same large ceramic bowl. But she never relied on mixing utensils. Everything had to be gently and thoroughly blended by hand, to ensure that every morsel got coated with the mayonnaise she made from scratch. Then she fine- tuned, adding eggs for body, vinegar and sugar to bring out the zest, a dash of paprika for color, and delicately cut pieces of red bell pepper for a pretty garnish.

When it was all done, and the meal had been served and enjoyed by the family members gathered at her house that Sunday, Miss Jessie would package the leftovers in her best Tupperware. Each container had to be the same size and color, so that we could each go home with an equal portion of food. It was usually enough to last us the rest of the week, enough that

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we could share it with the aunts, uncles, and cousins whod missed out.

Whatever Miss Jessie was making, whether it was potato salad, peach cobbler, macaroni and cheese, or a frosted vanilla cake, had to be perfection. Each ingredient had to be properly sourced, and only the freshest and most flavorful would do. Our grandmother never stinted on quality, although she was never a fool on price. We took that same approach when we sourced our materials for business.

She was also a stickler for presentation. Whatever came out of her kitchen had to look, smell, and taste heavenly. The texture and color had to be just right. Her food was an experi-ence for all the senses. Titi and I would later apply all of this knowledge and experience to our own products, putting the same love and care into our line of styling creams, condition-ers, and gels.

THE NIGHT TITI INTERRUPTED my sleep, she introduced me to what would become Curly Pudding, our first breakthrough hair- care product. But in the wee hours of the morning, neither Titi nor I could have known that this invention was to bring us equal amounts of joy and despair. Over the next few years, Curly Pudding, and an entire line of Miss Jessies products, would afford us opportunities we never imagined financial stability and independence and hard- fought recognition for being pio-neers of the emerging segment of the hair- care business called the natural hair movement. We didnt know then how huge this moment really was. But we had an idea we were on to something that would make our salon customers happy.

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