Dreaming of Books Giveaway - For Days and A Night

One of the first books I read this year, and which I'm featuring today is by a fellow blogger and writer, Seun Odukoya. And because the book is free, everyone is a winner.

Click this link to Download For Days and a Night

"With a quirky worldview and a lovely mix of naive and badly-experienced dark humor," For Days and A Night is a collection of short stories, a poem and some candid personal opinions – basically Seun Odukoya's perspective on some general issues, especially romance and relationships. It is his first published book.

To support the author, you can also follow Seun's blog http://seunodukoya.wordpress.com/ and his Twitter @seunodukoya.

The Burden of an Unhealthy Marriage by Nena Ndioma

My former husband came over to my place about a week ago for a ten-day visit. He hadn’t seen the children in almost two years. My sister thinks I’m crazy to let him stay at my place during this visit. She’s convinced I need therapy to help me figure out why I have this need to be so ‘nice’ to my ex-husband.

"I don’t think I’m being ‘nice’ though, necessarily," I say to my sister. "I’m just being ‘me.’"

This divorce thing is new for me and new for him. If there’s a manual on how to do it ‘right,’ I haven’t read it yet. I’m just taking things one day at a time and doing what feels right to me at any given time.

When the marriage was in the throes of death (we were informally separated at the time), things got to a point where it became critical for me to have him find his own accommodation when he visited the children. Back then, I really didn’t like the sort of person I had become as a result of the downward spiral of the marriage. I had become a master sleuth.

My Afang Soup Recipe with Okazi and Spinach

This was my first time of cooking Afang soup, ever, and I'm very happy at how it turned out. On one of our irregular trips to the African store, I picked up Utazi for my Nsala and when I saw a dried vegetable pack labelled Okazi, I also picked it up. I knew it was used in Afang soup, I had eaten it before and remembered it was a bit similar to Edika Iikong soup. I had made the latter before and thought, hey, I can make Afang with that recipe too.

To give kudos to whom it is due though, this would have been a disaster if not for coming across Eya's Afang recipe post before I made my soup. She mentioned that her Afang was pounded/ground. I was confused, but almost overlooked it. Her Afang was fresh and leafy, while mine was dry, store-packed and already cut. Still, that stuck.

Thank God for the internet. When I was ready to make mine, I googled ground Afang, and up popped some other Nigerian recipe sites. One specifically mentioned that when you buy dry, cut, store-packed Afang, you had to soak it in hot water for at least an hour, and then blend like a smoothie. And so the cooking began, with my adapted recipe below...