And so this weekend I had enough time and decided I do some fun stuff.
I had to come up with an idea with my mom. I told her I wanted to do some akpu which is popularly know as fufu in Nigeria and she agreed to it.
I enjoy eating this particular food but the stress in doing it is so much because you'll have to first of all dig the cassava from the ground which requires enormous strength and stamina.
But that was not going to deter me.
On a Wednesday morning she took me to her farm and we had to start by digging up some of the cassava from the ground.
We Didi the diging for close to an hour and we where swearing all the while we were diging.
It wasn't easy but at the end of the diging we came up with two bags of raw cassava. No pain no gain I said to my mom which made her to smile a little.
After diging we packed up and went home.
When we got home we pilled the cassava and soaked them in water.
Before you can make the akpu(fufu) the process requires you soak the pilled cassava for three or four days in water to enable it ferment.
This process makes the cassava to be soft which will enable us to wash it.
After saoking it for three days we brought out the cassava and washed it with a big bowl of water and a filter.
After washing we had to put it in a sack that has tiny holes to enable the water from the cassava to go out.
After the washing them came the cooking process.
This stage is one of the most stressful.
To start cooking we had to fetch some firewood to set up a local cooking place.
After setting up the fire wood we brought our big cooking pot and put it on the fire we made and then poured the raw fufu. Before pouring it we had to run our hands through the raw fufu to remove excess lump from it.
We placed the raw fufu on fire, poured some water to it and then stired it. After siring for some time we covered the pot for some minutes to enable it cook for a while.
After waiting for minutes I opened the pot and stored continuously again and also adding some water to it. This was not easy at all because I had to be enduring the heat that was coming out of the fire.
I did the stiring until the whiteness of the fufu was off white and hard
This was a sign that the fufu is cooked.
I brought it down and molded them to hard lumps.
Our hard work finally paid.
No pain no gain.
and then came eating time.