Chef Lost Her Fingers and Legs After Hospitalization. Back in the Kitchen, She Says ‘I Still Have a Place in This World’

"I almost can't envision a future without food. It's such an integral part of our existence as human beings," 'The New York Times' cooking writer Yewande Komolafe tells PEOPLE

NEED TO KNOW

• The New York Times cooking writer Yewande Komolafe was hospitalized and had both legs and her fingers amputated in 2024
• The trained pastry chef and cookbook author is now back in the kitchen and working alongside her cooking assistants to continue developing recipes
• She tells PEOPLE, “I’m still important in this world, and I still have a place in this world, and it doesn’t matter what I look like”

After losing both legs and her fingers, one Brooklyn chef and recipe developer says she hasn't reached the end of her story. Her next phase is just beginning.

Yewande Komolafe, a cooking writer for The New York Times, became a bilateral and digital amputee in 2024 after being admitted to the hospital for flu-like symptoms. Komolafe, now 44, was born with sickle cell disease and assumed she would be in and out for a routine stay in December 2023, but eventually fell into critical condition and was transferred to a second hospital, where she was placed in a coma.

"I understand now that I was not properly taken care of at the original hospital I went to," she tells PEOPLE over two years after that hospital stay. She's quick to note of her sickle cell diagnosis, "I've nurtured it all my life, so I'm very deliberate in saying that this didn't happen because I had sickle cell."

She was only transferred when her condition worsened, she says: "I was asked where I was and I said, 'I'm in my kitchen,' and they instantly knew something was going on."

At the second hospital, Komolafe was eventually told by doctors that she would have both legs amputated below the knee, in addition to her fingers. After seven months, Komolafe — who was fitted with prosthetic hands and legs and uses an electric wheelchair — finally returned to the Red Hook, Brooklyn, home she shares with her husband and two young daughters.

One of the first things she made upon her return was her mom's pepper soup.

Komolafe's mother had come to New York from Nigeria, where the recipe developer grew up. During visits to the hospital, she brought her daughter Nigerian meals from a Manhattan food cart. Once Komolafe was discharged, her mother stayed with her and her family in Brooklyn.

"I sat down with her and together we broke apart what's in the pepper soup spice," she recalls. "It instantly reminds you of a place. I wanted pepper soup because I was also craving very spicy foods."

While Komolafe made that dish with her mom, she works with cooking assistants these days, who help her develop recipes for the Times, which she first joined in 2018. Readers have come to love her flavorful creations, like Brothy Thai Curry With Silken Tofu and Herbs or Vegetable Maafé. Many of her recipes have ties to her childhood roots in Lagos.

Komolafe tells PEOPLE "it was a whole process" to get her cooking assistants in place.

"It took me understanding that it's okay that I'm not physically cooking the recipes," she says. "I'm still the voice and the creator behind the recipes."

Komolafe — who is also the author of the cookbook My Everyday Lagos — begins the collaboration process by writing out the recipe as it comes to her, putting everything in a Google Doc. She then sends the document along to her three assistants (she has one for each day, from Tuesday through Thursday, when she's developing most recipes), and has all ingredients delivered to her home.

While she was initially unsure how the cultural context of her recipes would translate to her cooking assistants — "I typically write very African recipes," she explains — she realized trust was key.

"I trust my process enough to understand that it's not about perfectionism, it's just more about repetition and practice," she tells PEOPLE. "It's kind of like a collaborative, almost cyclical relationship, where if I don't have trust for them, then they automatically don't have trust for me."

Komolafe says she hasn't had to make any major renovations to her kitchen, which has been "surprisingly welcoming" to her. The only changes she's made since returning from the hospital are adding a ramp between her kitchen and living room, and another in her backyard.

Her husband of 10 years, Mark, is her primary caregiver these days, but she has also hired others to help her with daily tasks like showering or getting dressed.

Komolafe moved to New York in 2008, and first came to know of Mark through a dinner he hosted with fellow chefs at his Williamsburg loft. She left the city for a stint in Birmingham, Ala., but soon returned to New York, where the two formally connected when she made the cake for a friends's wedding, which was also hosted in Mark's loft.

After their relationship turned romantic a couple of years later — she admits she "didn't realize it was a date," and brought a friend along when they first went out — she moved into that very loft. After about a year of dating, they got married.

They've since welcomed daughters Aṣa, 7, and Olamidé, 4, and Komolafe says she's trying to "engage them in the littlest way possible" in her cooking process. But, she admits, "because there's two of them, I do have to split the task."

The girls are interested in cooking "in the sense that they're always around it," she explains. "They see me doing it a lot. They see their dad doing it a lot."

For Komolafe, food has remained a constant in life. It's not only daily nourishment, but "a very integral part about how I take care of myself," she tells PEOPLE.

Beyond that, food "has been steadily the way I describe the world to myself, and the way I understand the world is through food," she says.

While the cooking process is different for her now, she says she doesn't even want to "think of a world that exists where food is not a part of it."

"I'm lucky and I'm privileged to call this work and to have a job doing this," she adds. "But I almost can't envision a future without food. It's such an integral part of our existence as human beings."

Of course, some days come with frustrations, but she's learned to release negative feelings instead of bottling them up. She explains, "A lesson for me that's come out of all this is just understanding myself first, and understanding that whatever emotion I feel is valid."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Komolafe says that she may look different than before, but she remains the same person. She loves her body, but has never felt "attached" to it.

"It's brought me here and it's stayed with me throughout this process of being a human, but I'm very in tune with my spirit side, where I understand that I can exist as both," she says.

Komolafe tells PEOPLE, "I'm still important in this world, and I still have a place in this world, and it doesn't matter what I look like. My spirit feels the same, and my spirit is still flying."

Read the full article here