A Classic

I didn’t invent the watermelon margarita; it’s a classic. But I had fun making it. Pretty pretty. I honestly wouldn’t serve it with watermelon in the bowl like this, though — you wouldn’t easily be able to get to it once you finished your drink. Not practical! Better to just fill that bowl with ice, help keep your drink cold.

2-4 oz. watermelon juice (to taste)
1 oz. tequila (you can infuse the tequila with green chili if you like)
1/2 oz. lime juice
garnish of watermelon slice and green chili slice, salt for rim

Pretty Pulpy

Turns out it’s pretty pulpy; if you let it sit, it’ll separate. But for making cocktails, you’re probably going to want to sieve it.

Serendib Grilling?

Just a quick note, with less than 48 hours less to go, we’ve hit our second stretch goal, woot! Thanks, folks, and welcome to the new backers! Going to try for one more stretch goal — if we make it to $10,000, I’ll do one more e-book sampler, Serendib Grilling.

Again, we’ll offer it in both vegan and non-vegan versions, with a baker’s dozen of recipes, and it’ll be sent to all backers, $1 and up. I’m going to set the completion date out a little later, just to give myself time, aiming for June 2022. Just in time for summer grilling around here…

https://www.kickstarter.com/…/vegan-serendib-a-sri…/

49 Hours Left to Go in My Kickstarter

So I thought now was a good time to do a quick review of how this Kickstarter project went. (If you’re a Kickstarter person, feel free to drop tips in the comments; newbies should feel free to ask questions too!)

Usually what you see with Kickstarter is a U-shaped distribution of activity, with a peak at the beginning when you launch (and tell your friends), a big trough through the middle of the month, and then another peak at the end (when people realize you’re about to run out of time, and they should hurry up if they want to get in on any discounts, etc).

What I’m usually trying to do with my Kickstarters now is set my initial goal as low as I can manage — whatever the minimum is for the project actually happening. That alleviates a lot of stress for me; I try hard to do enough promotion in those first days to actually meet the goal. Once it’s funded, I can relax a little. I don’t ever want to be in a situation like I was with my first Kickstarter, where I was up until 3 a.m. on the final night, waiting to see if it funded. (Kickstarter is all-or-nothing, so if you don’t meet your goal, you get zilch. Brutal.)

After that initial push, ideally you’d have plenty of promotion planned for the rest of the month, to keep pushing the bottom of the ‘U’ trough up as much as you can. In actuality, I got busy and did almost nothing about the Kickstarter for weeks after it funded. This is typical for me. I don’t necessarily recommend it. 🙂

Now, this isn’t actually an activity graph — it’s a funding graph, so it’s not measuring the same thing I was talking about initially above. (I’m not sure if Kickstarter has an activity graph somewhere that I can grab.) So it was never going to dip down again — it can only hold flat or go up.

But what you do see is that it continued to go up, a little slowly, over the course of the month. And then as we enter the last few days (and I do a bunch of posting), it goes up sharply, as one would expect.

We’ve just passed our second stretch goal, $7500, with an initial goal of $2500. So we’ve tripled what we originally set, and that will be enough for us to be nice and relaxed at Serendib Press as we actually produce the book; if I need to spend a little extra money on design or indexing or some such, it won’t be a stressor. That’s good.

I’m not going to do what I did with Feast and invest additional money in a print run; there’s only so many books I want to manage storage for, and right now, with Feast’s initial print run interrupted by the pandemic shelter-in-place starting right after launch day, I have as much stock on hand as I can manage.

So Vegan will be POD — that means it’s more like $20 to print a hardcover than $10, so when you add in all the other production costs, I’ll probably only make a dollar or two / book. (Let us not even try to calculate the amount of time I put into thinking about, reading about, developing recipes, and cooking them — that way lies madness.)

A dollar or two / book is fine; I never intended this book to be wildly profitable (I mean, if it happens, I won’t complain.) It’s really a labor of love; I mostly wanted it to exist in the world for all the vegans and vegetarians who would love Sri Lankan food, but who would be distressed by paging through Feast and passing all the non-vegan recipes. My food should only bring people joy. 🙂

Karina, love, this one is for you, with the fondest memories of our travels through Sri Lanka. I hope we get to go back before too long.

A Third Stretch Goal

Eep. I stopped by to check the Kickstarter, and we’re just $60 away from the second stretch goal, which I think means I should assume we’ll hit it in the next 64 hours (which is how long is left on this thing), so probably I should come up with a THIRD stretch goal.

https://www.kickstarter.com/…/vegan-serendib-a-sri…

So far we have two little sampler e-books:

• Serendib Cocktail Party (goal #1)

• Serendib Teatime (goal #2)

I am honestly not sure what to do for the next stretch goal! A few options:

• Serendib Baking
• Serendib Brunch

• Serendib Grilling

If you have a preference among those three, speak now. 🙂

(Image borrowed from TimeOut, of high tea at my beloved Galle Face Hotel.)

Hibiscus Tea

If you’re not getting as bright a color as you’d like, remember to acidify — a little lemon or lime juice should set you right.

The Flying Hibiscus

If I ever open up that cafe / bookstore / flower shop / art gallery / textile arts shop / bar (it’s not going to happen, I have books to write, but y’know, a girl can dream), I’d have to offer this cocktail. I even gave it a fun name. Put a bird on it!

*****

The Flying Hibiscus

2 oz. hibiscus tea (boil a few handfuls of hibiscus flowers in 8 oz. water to make hibiscus tea)
juice of 1/2 a lime
1-2 T rose syrup (to taste), or honey

1 oz. vodka (optional)

1. Make hibiscus tea. Combine 2 oz. tea with lime juice and rose syrup (or honey). You can enjoy it just as it is — a little tangy, a little sweet, beautifully floral.

2. Stir in vodka for the alcoholic version. Garnish with hibiscus flower and enjoy!

I Think It’s Okay

I really shouldn’t start on the cocktail party cookbook recipes until I finish up the vegan cookbook ones — but since this cocktail is also vegan, and I can potentially include it, I think it’s okay. (There’s going to have to be a bit of a winnowing, though — I have more recipes than I have room for in the book…) I had just enough blooms on my hibiscus tree to pull this off.