We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tiffany Skelton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tiffany below.

Tiffany , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, let’s take a stroll on memory lane, back to when you were an apprentice or intern. What’s a memorable story from that time that you can share with us?

I learn by cultural immersion, even though I am a current catering and culinary student. Starting eight years ago, I began traveling to Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) because I wanted to learn the culture and history surrounding an art I practiced at the time, capoeira.

I didn’t know anyone when I went on my first trip and took my, then, nine year old son with me. Searching the Internet, I looked for cultural immersion schools and found one called Instituto Cultural Idioma where they spoke very little English and I equated the same, pulling from songs I knew from percussion. We stayed for six weeks with a host family and were so inspired by how welcoming, humbling, and joyful jt was just to be there. The learning was intense, but we picked up; language, mannerisms, fluency, and gained a community very quickly and it felt like a second home. The one area I paid the most attention to was-food.

Towards the end of my first trip, I wanted to thank the staff and surprise my classmates by cooking southern food from my hometown of Georgia-and they thought I had made it wrong which I suspected they would.

Much of Northeast Brazil shares a lot of the same ancestry with African Americans from the south that arrived during the Transatlantic Slave Trade from the ports of Luanda through Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, among others, in the US and Salvador, Bahia in Brazil. Because it had not always been common for African Americans to visit Bahia and vice versa and get to know each other’s countries, other than traveling for capoeira and the history was still unknown unless you talked to someone local and really for info the depths of the cultures and how they are so similar.

Back to the story, my teachers were walking around the table identifying the dishes as Bahian dishes and asked me to speak about what I had made. I explained in my newly struggling Portuguese, that i hadn’t made Brazilian food but food of my homeland and how they were similar to Bahian food and how they were different and why. They were shocked. From that point I knew two things: I wanted to continue studying food related to history and that I wanted to specialize in Bahian cuisine.

My son became the first African American child to attend that immersion program in 2017. Years to come after, I continued my love for food and history and began traveling to learn more.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After retiring from the military, a group of women decided to attend a woodworking class at Operation Comfort, a non profit for veterans that facilitates activities to integrate veterans into having an active life, to learn how to make a box. I was the one that kept going back and that was ten years ago!

Over the years my focus changed with what I wanted to build and once I began culinary school, I congruently focused on woodworking exclusively for the kitchen. Most of my products are uniquely and designed by myself in simplicity. I create products that solve problems in my kitchen but give it a unique look and feel. I work with bamboo, cedar, live wood, white pine, and other mediums. I eu to create or curate items that you may not find anywhere else such as napkin holders with bamboo dowels, paper towel holders vertical and horizontal to live round wood, and quirky kitchen humor because I love to laugh.

I call my business an empire because of my passion to do several area that make a kitchens. I love to garden so I laser garden stakes. I sew so I make kitchen boas. And for the trash I created a rolling double trash can that moves around the kitchen along with a smaller version.

I love to share knowledge and my passion is high school athletes so I am almost done with a pilot 5-series program that teaches athletes how to cook for themselves and doing sports team catering after being a team mom and food coordinator for four years.

I also believe that food goes hand in hand with health and just celebrated my one year anniversary learning how to curate and cook healthy meals at the Healthy Teaching Program Audie Murphy Memorial Hospital in San Antonio, TX. I create my own spices and kitchen cottage products as well.

A lot of projects, but currently my focus is culinary woodworking and Spices and Culinary Blends, since I am currently in culinary school. And plan to grow as I have more time. Currently I am looking to be a vendor at a standing venue without having to be present so that I can focus on the product and studies.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Balance and drive. Your drive to keep going has to fuel your balance to overcome your stress much if the time. Culinary is not for the meek at heart. It’s a lot of soul searching, many hours reading, processing, comprehending and still living life with all of your other responsibilities.

My son was the starting wide receiver as a senior this year and it was my first semester in college. There were times I had to leave games early, only for him to make game plays and touchdowns while I was heading home and I didn’t see them. I would have homework due and wanted to go spend time doing something else and I had to stay home and do homework.

I had my doubts that almost made me think about quitting: Did I start too soon? Shouldn’t I just wait until my son graduates? Am I being selfish to others by spending time by myself? Can I do this despite my limitations being aggravated at times? Yet still, I had another question and it pushed me. Why not me?

Nothing every came to me easy and it all came out of fight, staying focused, and refusing to give in to self doubt, discipline, motivation, and seeing the bigger picture for me through that first semester and I am proud to say that I am still doing well and wrapped up that first semester very well and my village supported me through it all.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Woodworking was a side hustle for me, in the beginning. It was, more so, something for me to keep my hands busy. People would commission me for my work if they wanted something made in the neighborhood. Eventually, I had my first woodshop inside of a garage in my apartment complex and it drove the neighbors crazy! I started posting on my IG, things I made,and people began to DM me for requests then I became the neighborhood woodworker. From there, I moved to our current home and posted on our neighborhood app and did a few outdoor vendor gigs which is hard because you do all of the work to go to a location for people who barely come to the location or for it not to be advertised. I had to learn how much to bring with me and which ones to accept. It is still a learning process for me to find a consistent platform to only focus on creating, but I will continue to push until find my way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mstiffanys,com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/mstiffsempire/