Baltimore Ravens wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins has long bragged about his mother author and activist Sabrina Greenlee’s amazing skills in the kitchen, sharing how she whips up full-course meals of black-eyed peas, cornbread, chicken, and more. While it’s not uncommon for an NFL star to praise their mom’s home cooking, Hopkins’s mom’s ability to burn is even more impressive because she accomplishes it without sight.
The Root 100 2024 honoree Sabrina Greenlee wrote candidly about surviving a horrific acid attack that left her blind and raising four successful children – including NFL player DeAndre Hopkins – as a single mother in her 2024 memoir, “Grant Me Vision.”
Now, Greenlee is sharing even more of her story as she let her over 40,000 TikTok followers into her kitchen to get a closer look at how she prepares meals for herself. In an April 18 video she captioned “Cooking with confidence,” Greenlee showed viewers how she navigates her way around her kitchen to find the ingredients she needs to prepare a balanced breakfast of scrambled eggs, fruit and plant-based bacon.
In the clip, Greenlee shares how she relies on her senses of hearing and touch to help her get through the process, including knowing when her pans are at the right temperature for cooking. But she adds that the most important thing she uses to help her in the kitchen is instinct.
“How do I know when my eggs are done? I really don’t,” she says. “I’ve done it enough times to kind of know by the timing that they’re done. I love to cook, so I just have to figure it out.”
Viewers were stunned seeing Greenlee cook and plate her beautiful breakfast, which she says she likes to enjoy on her patio so she can hear the sounds of nature.
“This woman amazes me. Despite what she’s been through, she still perseveres, and she’s still a baddie!” wrote someone in the comments.
But while Greenlee’s followers are impressed, she sees it as just another thing she needs to do to get by. In a June 2024 video titled ‘Breakfast with Brina,” Greenlee said her independence isn’t a miracle, but a necessity.
“Everybody’s always talking about how I do things, and they can’t believe it. It’s like some miracle, but I’m like for me, it’s just everyday life,” she said.