Glenda Anderson, Staff Reporter 
WINSTON SILL, Freelance Photographer -
Kathleen Grandison, 'Miss Kathy' prepares
pastry for the day's sale.
KATHLEEN GRANDISON has a wicked sweet tooth.
It's a craving so bad she has ditched her regular nine-to-five job to create, sample and sell her own delicious masterpieces while putting in rigorous extra hours each week as a part-time cook with Premier Caterers in Kingston.
Her specialities are potato and cornmeal puddings, orange, fruit and (her favourite) carrot cakes.
The tall, pleasant Grandison says her sweet addiction started years ago in Mango Valley, St. Mary, when the mouth-watering aroma of her mother's sweet potato puddings would fill the neighbourhood on a Sunday morning. The pudding was
usually dessert after a hefty country style dinner.
Grandison remembers that wide-eyed youngsters would trickle into the yard and hang around for hours until the
golden brown triumph cooled, hoping for a slice.
None was disappointed.
To the young Kathleen, this was sheer heaven on earth.
She's the only of 16 children to follow in her mother's baking ways. Years later when she started having her own children the Sunday morning pudding ritual was repeated, and her own obsession matured.
Untrained, but with a passion for mixing dough, Grandison says she has learnt to make
her own mouth-watering
concoctions by putting what she learnt from her mother, with information culled from books, experimenting with recipes and swapping ideas with friends.
FOOD PHILOSOPHY: Always think healthy. Think of feeding your customers as healthily as you can and make sure you have good standards and a clean, pleasant environment. Make them look forward to coming for what you have to offer.
FOODS YOU HATE:
I really don't have foods that
I hate, because I basically cook what I like, the way I like it. But generally I don't like sloppy foods -- badly presented foods, and foods in heavy/thick gravy.
WHAT FOOD YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT:
Tea (Lipton) and crackers. That's my life. I have tea every day (three or four times for the day) with milk and sugar. It fuels me up when I'm tired and it really relaxes my body for the next course of work. I rely on that.
KITCHEN/CUPBOARD CONFESSION:
Fried stuff, especially fried plantains, that's something I know I really need to give up but that's it for me. I know it's bad but I love it.
FIRST FOOD MEMORY:
I was either eight or nine at the time and one Sunday my mother made one of her potato puddings. From the start it was just different. It was at a time when Dutch pots were just
coming out and instead of
using the pudding pan like she normally did, she placed the pudding pot into a Dutch pot with water on top of the coal
pot and then put coals on top
of the pudding pot cover.
The others were good but somehow that one came out extremely nice. I remember one child who came was deaf and didn't speak well but he made his own little signs to tell my mother that the pudding was so good he wanted a piece to take home for his father. It was so good he didn't even want to share his so he was begging a slice for his father.
