The Diary Game [13/06/2015] // Cooking for a Large Family Can be Stressful.

Steem greetings, guys, from the motherland, Cameroon, and welcome to my blog for another session of my diary game. It has been a challenging thing for me cooking on the local fireside because my eyes are not smoke-friendly. I have eye issues which get worse whenever I come across smoke. As an African mother, there are certain foods and quantities that our gas cookers cannot contain in their pots because of their size.

^{My phone is bad, so I took images with a Friend's phone and transferred.}

I got up from bed and decided to have a good rest day at home with no office work to do. Little did I know that when I announced my rest day at home, I would be given another difficult task. I was welcomed with a bucket of cocoyams to prepare our local traditional delicacy, ekwang, for a family gathering. This is one of the meals that requires a lot of patience and time to prepare the meal. Apparently, I already knew my entire day would be occupied cooking the meal.

I started by peeling the cocoyams and washing them with clean water, and keeping them in a colander to dry. This will ease the grating process as the cocyams will be dry and no water on them to make it slippering to grate. The most challenging part of the meal is the grating part, and wrapped in leaves.

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The worst of it was that there was no adult at home to help or assist in wrapping the grated cocoyams in the leaves. It took me about 2 hours to wrap it and another 30 minutes to prepare the spices and grind them in a local grinding stone. It's a local meal, so it was obvious that all the spices were local, and I had to prepare them the local way. After wrapping the grated cocoyams in the leaves, I had to go to the fireside to cook them.

^{Cooking at the fireside.}

While cooking the meal, I went to the plum tree to check if I could find any ripe plums to roast on the fireside to eat with boiled corn. This is the season for plums in my country, but unfortunately, our plum tree is not ready yet to be harvested. When I arrived under the plum tree, I noticed the breeze had blown some of the plums off the tree. The plums have started getting ready, but none were totally ready to be consumed.

I returned to the fireside to continue my cooking. One good thing about our local fireside is that when the firewood is dry enough, food cooks faster. I was done cooking and dished out the food to be served. Then I had some fresh groundnuts to boil and eat with the boiled corn. We enjoyed it while chatting about some family issues. It was such a great moment catching up with family and also enjoying each other's company.

After eating and chatting, by evening, everyone returned to their various houses, while I had to clean and wash all the dirty dishes and plates. I took a cold shower because the temperatures were high. I tried to follow some series on Netflix, but my brain could not comprehend anything. I was so tired that I decided to take a short nap before getting up to warm the food and feed my kids.

I had a series of discussions with my husband, and I had to get a plumber to do some plumbing work at home. As of now, we know no good plumbers around to do the job, and we rely on recommended plumbers who have ended up failing us. It was a good day, but it was tiring cooking for a larger family on the local fireside. Anyways, everyone enjoyed the meal and I was appreciated for preparing such a mouthwatering meal. Until my next diary, guys, it is goodnight from my end.