Car­ol Quash

Trudy Dais­ley has Trinidad and To­ba­go crav­ing her culi­nary cre­ations. Suc­cu­lent roast­ed chick­en, grilled fish and lamb, pick­led veg­eta­bles, and rich pump­kin soup paired with soft, fresh­ly baked bread—what­ev­er she pre­pares, she shares it with her thou­sands of fol­low­ers on Tik­Tok.

Since she start­ed post­ing her cook­ing videos more than five years ago, Dais­ley has amassed a loy­al au­di­ence, some of whom have even filmed them­selves head­ing to her home for Christ­mas. Her tal­ent has caught the at­ten­tion of so­ca artiste Na­dia Bat­son, who praised one of Dais­ley’s bread recipes. State tele­vi­sion TTT will fea­ture her pastelle-mak­ing skills to­mor­row.

“I’ve been cook­ing since around eight years old, learn­ing in the kitchen with my moth­er and ob­serv­ing oth­ers to tweak recipes to my taste,” Dais­ley told WE, laugh­ing soft­ly. “With all the cook­ing that I do, I have not one bit of pro­fes­sion­al train­ing what­so­ev­er.”

Her on­line culi­nary jour­ney be­gan with quirky re­views of un­usu­al fruits found in Trinidad and To­ba­go. One night, dur­ing a pow­er out­age, she and her sis­ter de­cid­ed to make bake and shark in the dark—and the ex­per­i­ment sparked a pas­sion that has on­ly grown.

“It start­ed off like that, and it built from there. But I think it’s the breads that re­al­ly made things take off, es­pe­cial­ly in De­cem­ber,” she ex­plained. And, of course, what­ev­er she cooks for “the boss,” her hus­band Pe­ter, the “meat mouth.” “He loves meat, so I cook it in all dif­fer­ent ways.”

De­spite her pop­u­lar­i­ty, Dais­ley has no plans to open a restau­rant, con­trary to some fol­low­ers’ sug­ges­tions.

“A cook­book is def­i­nite­ly on the hori­zon, though,” she said, eyes sparkling. She has com­piled a man­u­script with over 200 recipes, but she’s tak­ing her time to en­sure the fi­nal prod­uct is prac­ti­cal and pol­ished.

Her dis­ci­pline comes from her time in the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force Air Guard.

“We learned ear­ly on in nu­clear train­ing: yes, do things fast, but don’t mis­take speed for ac­cu­ra­cy. We live in a world of in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but I want my cook­book to be use­ful and thor­ough,” she said.

As her pop­u­lar­i­ty grew, she be­gan mea­sur­ing and test­ing recipes for ac­cu­ra­cy. “Nor­mal­ly, I’d just go un­til God says stop,” she joked, cov­er­ing her mouth with her sig­na­ture long nails. She hopes to launch her cook­book in 2026, along with brand­ed kitchen­ware, in­clud­ing pots, knives, and bak­ing pans—the lat­ter a nod to her sig­na­ture breads.

Dais­ley’s kitchen pas­sions take a back seat, how­ev­er, to her 11-year-old son Za­le, who is on the autism spec­trum. She re­tired ear­ly from mil­i­tary life to be a stay-at-home mom, fo­cus­ing on pro­vid­ing the sup­port her son needs.

“Mil­i­tary life is hec­tic, so my hus­band and I de­cid­ed I would re­tire,” she said.

Za­le at­tend­ed four dif­fer­ent schools be­fore find­ing one that met his needs.

To sup­port oth­er par­ents, Dais­ley start­ed a Tik­Tok mi­ni-se­ries called Heart­strings and Hur­dles, ded­i­cat­ed to chil­dren on the spec­trum and their fam­i­lies.

Now re­tired from the mil­i­tary, Dais­ley plans to com­plete a de­gree in Agro Pro­cess­ing and En­tre­pre­neur­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, hop­ing to teach pub­lic food class­es.

“I’ve al­ways loved agri­cul­ture, and I want to com­bine it with my culi­nary skills,” she ex­plained.

Her dream in­cludes a small home­stead with chick­ens, home­grown pro­duce, and meals made en­tire­ly from scratch.

But de­spite these per­son­al shifts, her fol­low­ers can con­tin­ue en­joy­ing her sig­na­ture greet­ing: “Hi guys,” fol­lowed by the prepa­ra­tion of her mouth­wa­ter­ing recipes.

“I’ve been over­whelmed with the love and sup­port. I nev­er take it for grant­ed and tru­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it,” Dais­ley said.