By Samantha Hew, Founder of Hewmour Catering

I learned early that the most important thing in life is a good story. The good stories, of course, were repeated endlessly until they took on a life of their own. One of the stories I grew up on was a family legend about myself.

This is how my mother told it:

“One beautiful evening in early September I came home from a long day of work to find Peng (my chinese name) sitting at the dining table with a smile that can brighten up the whole town. I was looking at this little girl with the same eyes of the man I am in love with, my husband her father. “Welcome home mom, I made you dinner”, she said. And did I tell you she was only ten? She made all of my favorite dishes; total of eight dishes in one hour was no joke! And the kitchen was still safe to walk into. I knew she would be a chef one day and made me a proud parent. You know she inherited this love for cooking from me. I can make a meal out of anything. But Peng still needs to work on that, she only likes using unnecessary expensive ingredients…. ”

Did she exaggerate my age? I couldn’t possibly cooked an eight course meal in one hour at the age of ten or at any age given that amount of time. But my mother could make a trip to the supermarket sound like an adventure. She told the above story so often that it became a true story in our family; and it gets better each time. One of the dishes I made according to her was fried tofu stuffed fish meat. I of course can make the dish now even if the story may not be entirely factual. Enjoy and Happy Telling!

Women’s Mafia TALENT profile of Samantha Hew