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Hi, folks — I’m trying to put together a list of food bloggers, with the hopes of finding places who might want to interview me or have a guest post during the month of June, when we’re expecting to run the Vegan Serendib Kickstarter. Help?

Any suggestions for food bloggers / podcasters / favorite foodie magazines / etc. would be very welcome!

We’re trying a regular promotion this summer — buy a book (any print book, including the sci-fi, the romance, the literary fiction, not just the cookbooks), and get a half-dozen sweets to enjoy them with. Or curry powder, if you order on Sundays. Sweets will vary, depending on what I have on hand. Curry powder will be exactly the same every time.

Free passionfruit marshmallows with any print book purchase at the Serendib Kitchen shop today!

Nice meeting at Carnivore Oak Park, and it looks like they’ll be carrying Feast (hardcover & paperback), my hand-roasted Sri Lankan curry powder (small and large jars) and trying some Sri Lankan (and other) sweets. Woot!

Now, will they *keep* carrying them? I think that depends on whether people actually buy them. But it’s nice to start with, at any rate. The question is, what sweets should I bring them? I want them to be shelf-stable for a good long while. I’m currently thinking:

– dragonfruit chocolates with citrus

Those three are easy, because I know people adore them. Beyond that, I waffle a bit. Ideally, I’d like two more, so I can do a little sampler box. If you’ve had my sweets and have requests / suggestions, now is a good time to let me know! I’m planning to make sweets over the weekend and drop all the goodies off on Monday.

I have to admit, I was actually super-anxious about the roti cooking class today for no good reason — it’s just been a while since we did one, I think, and I was feeling out of practice and inept. (And in fact, we meant to record it and didn’t manage to, so sorry about that, folks — can’t post it! Tech, bah.)

But it actually went fine, the class itself was quite fun (esp. with Pooja Makhijani interviewing me through it), my roti taste good (the kids like them!), and I think I want to do more of these, get back in the habit again. But I also am not sure I have the brainpower to commit in advance to particular dishes. Hm.

Would there be any interest in a “Cooking Sri Lankan with Mary Anne” sequence of classes this summer? The idea would be something like:

– have Darius Vinesar attending so he can handle recording and also reading off chat questions to me; I can’t actually see the screen well enough to read them while I’m cooking

Thoughts? I could do one vegetarian / vegan sequence to start, and then maybe a non-veg if it went well and I decided to do it again.

I’ve finalized two items I’ll be offering at the May 2 Makerfaire this Sunday (11-4). My house, 332 Wisconsin Ave., the blue and purple house with the out of control spring garden.

• little jars of fresh-roasted Sri Lankan curry powder (no cayenne; add your own if you want it spicy), small jar $5; large jar $8

• confection treat boxes, $10: sesame-coconut-date balls, redbud and citrus white chocolate marshmallows, dragonfruit chocolates, coconut rock, cashew milk toffee

Aren’t the little hex jars the cutest? I die. I’ll also have Feast cookbooks for sale, of course!

Facebook event link:

Shipping out some cookbook & curry powder & milk toffee orders today. I want to apologize to the folks who ordered these — some of them are 6-8 weeks out from ordering, and I have to admit, they honestly just fell off my radar somehow; I got a little overwhelmed or pandemic-exhausted or something in March, and I lost track of checking the order tracker we have set up.

So sorry! I don’t think that’ll happen again, as Stephanie now knows to backstop me on that. Things just fall out of my head sometimes. Usually I should be able to ship book orders within a week!

I’m almost caught up on orders (just a few more masks to sew and send out today), and this is the last week of teaching, so I’m thinking about what I have capacity to do. Normally I’d have a fair bit of travel in the summer, but there probably won’t be much this year, so it’s basically writing, gardening, and then working on continuing to develop the SLF and Serendib.

I’m hoping to finish Vegan Serendib recipe development soon (you should see a flurry of recipes for that in the next two weeks), and we’re looking at starting to schedule book events for Feast over the rest of the year. We’re still a little tentative about in-person events, but maybe some outdoor events in the summer, and then possibly some indoor in the autumn? Always assuming we don’t have to backtrack with new virus variants, etc.

But for online promotions (I do still have something like 1500 books sitting in a warehouse in North Carolina, after cancelling all of last year’s book tour events), I was thinking that I probably have capacity to do a little fun stuff.

I was thinking about having regular weekly sales from May 1 – July 31? I’m thinking something like:

• Fridays are Sweet: get a set of 5 pieces of Sri Lankan cashew milk toffee with every book ordered

• Sunday are Savory: get 4 oz. of Sri Lankan curry powder with every book ordered

I think those should be relatively easy to manage production for over the summer; spending a little time every weekend on making milk toffee and curry powder sounds manageable, and like it won’t get in the way of novel-writing. And if it’s regular sales, there’s less mental tracking involved for me and the Serendib staff.

Thoughts welcome.