Cooking with Petey Nature

Hello welcome to another great episode of Cooking With Petey Nature. Tune in this Sunday August 26th @ 8pm EST/7pm CT/ 5pm PST to check out the show with my special Guest Chef Trudy. Chef Trudy Aka Erica McCier-Rayford from Abbeville, SC. I am a single mother of 3 and the chef and owner of Trudy's Personal Chef and Catering established July 2012. Growing up I've always had a passion for food. I grew up in a large family where everything was centered around my grand parent's house. I credit my grandfather Napolian McCier for my love of food and nature. Everything that we ate growing up, he grew it or killed it. In a sense he taught us how to live off of the land. I can vividly recall being a little girl observing my grandfather and his brothers harvesting sugar cane and making their own molasses. My grandmother, Molcy McCier was the one who first taught me how to cook. There was never a day that passed by that you could not find biscuits, hot water cornbread and fatback (along with my grandfather's molasses) on her stove. During the summers every Friday night was the neighborhood fish fries. I still live in the same neighborhood which I grew up in. Back in the day everyone looked out for each other. No one in the neighborhood went without and until this day our neighborhood is still the same. I haven't always had a career in the hospitality industry, upon graduating from high school I attended Winthrop University and Lander University where I earned a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Arts and a Master's In the Art of Teaching. I taught in Abbeville County School District for 7 years until I fell ill with kidney disease. It was then when I decided to attend Culinary Arts School at Greenville Tech and Virginia College of Greenville to pass the time away until I received a kidney transplant. I was on dialysis for 5 years and I received a kidney transplant in 2013. After my transplant I had fell in love with being a chef and decided to change my career.