with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Today is mostly a grading day, but I’m taking a little break to say that we’ve gotten our holiday gift packages up! Books + tea towels + curry powder sale options abounding.
Plus, if you buy any of them, you get a free e-book of The Marshmallows of Serendib thrown in — a baker’s dozen of marshmallow recipes, plus a tiny story Anand and I wrote together. 
Order here: https://serendib-kitchen.myshopify.com
Serendib Kitchen: Sri Lankan American Cooking by WORT 89.9FM Madison
With Thanksgiving on the horizon and feasting on our minds, today we spend the hour with professor and food blogger Mary Anne Mohanraj, who recently published A Feast of Serendib, one of the first Sri Lankan American cookbooks.
I don’t have a good version of this tea towel on hand yet (this one I photographed has an error on it), but Spoonflower has the corrected version available for sale in my shop.
I love how the design came out. (Motifs by Kavya.) It features a very old Tang Dynasty poem; this is a perfect autumn gift for a far-away friend, I think.
The tea towel (pattern of your choice) + homemade curry powder is a better deal than either alone, at $28. This is a great option if you’ve already picked up a copy of my cookbook, for you or a friend, and now you want another present (moar presents for all!), but I don’t have another cookbook out yet, alas…
Thankfully, everyone needs tea towels and curry powder, right?
(Coming soon in the Serendib Kitchen shop.)
Holiday sale package photo — coming soon in the Serendib shop. This one is:
– Pumpkin Curry tea towel (plant motifs by Kavya Whyte)
($55 + shipping)
Stephanie Bailey asked me for holiday package photos, so you’ll see some of those popping up today. This is the trade paperback cookbook + homemade curry powder combo.
Here’s the Wisconsin live radio segment from earlier today!
Recipes From Sri Lanka
Cooking traditional foods connects us to our roots. We talk to the author of a cookbook that celebrates her Sri Lankan heritage.
Okay, here’s a cooking question. I was buying some Bakto extracts, and they had smoke extract, and I have this dragon theme going for my Patreon treat boxes, so I HAD to get some smoke extract, right?
But now I realize I have no idea how to use it. I’ve used liquid smoke in a curry, but I don’t think this is the same thing. I suspect people mostly use it for barbecue?
I smelled it, and it smells nice and interesting. I tasted a bit, and the extract is VERY strong, so it’s honestly a little hard to get a real sense of the flavor that way.
What I actually want to do is put it in a sweet of some kind — a marshmallow or cookie or truffle. Thoughts? Is this going to be interesting, or a disaster? I haven’t found any recipes online using it.
You know what feels really great? When you imagine a thing, and you make it, and it actually comes out the way you intended. I LOVE how this pumpkin curry tea towel came out! Kavi did the pumpkin and vines and leaf; I did the recipe and overall design. I tried to pick a cheerful, slightly child-like font that was similar to Kavi’s handwriting, which is neat and rounded.
Sri Lankan peeps, I feel like this would be a nice gift for Amma, don’t you think? If you have a cooking Amma, that is.
I had thought it wouldn’t be affordable for me to sell tea towels in my own shop, with shipping multiple directions, etc., but it turns out that Spoonflower has a fill-a-yard option that works really well. I can fit 4 tea towels on a yard of fabric, which brings the per unit cost down considerably. So if you’re sewing yourself, this is a great thing to know about, and if you don’t sew, I can actually sell them.
They’re still not cheap, I’m afraid — I need to price them at $24 each to make it worthwhile. But you get a significant discount on them if you get them as part of a Patreon treat box (sign up by November 30th for the December boxes). (http://patreon.com/mohanraj)
I think we can offer some package options too, since that saves us on the shipping cost part — I’m thinking:
• Feast hardcover + 2 tea towels + curry powder ($85)
Is it confusing, having so many options to choose from? I felt like more would be good, but maybe not…?
The beetroot curry recipe has made it to The Province newspaper in Canada — I have to admit, the layout of this one kind of startled me, as it looks like a supermarket tabloid. Beet curry is pretty sexy, though, right? I think so.
