COOKING MAMA Vicky Velosa-Barrera prepares okonomiyaki in one of her morning sessions
Vicky Veloso Barrera spent her summers watching her mom, designer Malu Veloso, create sartorial masterpieces, even learning to sew on her own, but it was cooking she really loved. She would pore over Betty Crocker cookbooks and her mom’s cookbooks, choosing instead to spend summer hours in the kitchen creating her own recipes, and making up special dishes. (She loved cooking so much that when her cousins came to play, she would be in the kitchen preparing their snacks instead of playing with them.)
So for the past 23 years, Vicky has run Tiny Kitchen, her own cooking school for children and teens, with the youngest learners at 3, and the oldest at 19. She’s never faltered in the past two decades, except for when she was pregnant with her third child but the pandemic stopped her operations, and Vicky’s little chefs decided they didn’t want to do online classes. Vicky, who’s also an author