One

MAKING SOMETHING
OUT OF NOTHING

What is excellent is always beautiful.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL

iko, 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 experimentation, 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 unerring sense of what worked. This was where the magic happened. 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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Making Something O ut of N othing 3

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 bargain 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 prepared, 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 experience 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, conditioners, 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 imaginedfinancial stability
and independence and hard-fought recognition for being pioneers 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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