It was a complete surprise to Takeila Peebles that she was asked to audition for ‘MasterChef.’
And when she did audition for the Fox Network show that puts amateur chefs through an elimination process, the Park Forest woman said she could not stop crying.
Now, the woman is elated to be one of the show’s 40 contestants when it premieres at 7 p.m. on June 1.
“I never thought I would make it,” Peebles said. “I just never thought. I was just crying and crying because I just could not believe it.”
In fact, the mother of a friend, who loved Peebles soul food cooking, was the one who started her application process for the show. Eventually, Peebles, who works as a nail technician in Park Forest, completed the application, never expecting anything.
“I have been cooking for years,” Peebles said. “My stepmother always told me a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Well, I got the cooking down but no man in my life.”
The audition process started in September. For her first audition in Chicago, she made a savory chicken BLT waffle with a maple sauce. She was floored when the judges had nothing but positive comments. Then she waited there to see if her number was called for a return audition. She didn’t hear her number and left.
“I remember it clear as day,” Peebles said. “I walked out because I didn’t think I made it. Then all of a sudden people were running behind me, and someone yelled, ‘Waffle lady! What are you doing down there? You are suppose to come up here.”
She returned the next day for a taping. The entire process had taken weeks before she was finally notified that she was among the 40 people who were chosen out of the thousands who auditioned.
Her success, however, was bittersweet. It meant that she would have to temporarily leave her seven-year-old son, Caison, daughter, Tedejah and her granddaughter, here in Illinois. She has already had to fly to Los Angeles for the show.
“That was the hardest part,” she said. “I knew it was a lot for me to leave (my son). At first, I didn’t think I could do that. But he understood, and I realized that I had to leave to follow my dream. Once he let me know that he was OK and excited for me I was OK.”
Cooking is a way of life for Peebles. Several years ago she was diagnosed with Lupus and was in and out of the hospital. She decided to change the way she ate, which made all the difference, she said.
“If you change your diet you can change your entire life,” Peebles said. “In 2012, I took myself off medicine and changed my eating habits. I drink lots of water. I stay away from red meat and people who smoke.”
For years, Peebles shared her healthy eating with friends and family.
On Sundays, she would invite 50 or more people over to her home offering them up to 32 different dishes to try.
That led to her starting her own catering company, Easy Living Café, working for friends and their friends.
She is so often in the kitchen that when her two-year-old granddaughter, Mackenzie, comes to visit, “she drags me to the stove and says, ‘Grammy, something is suppose to be up there,'” Peebles laughed.
Peebles could not get into specifics on the taping or how far she got on the show because it has yet to air.
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“It was the best time of my life,” she said. “Honestly, just meeting the whole family of MasterChef is really amazing and the relationships you build are priceless. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
She added that she will take what she learned from the show and hopefully, one day, open her own place in the Matteson and Park Forest area that will offer “a place to sit, relax, have some really good soup and salad and the best jerk chicken salad.”
Patricia Trebe is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.