with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Serendib House Valentine’s Day sale is live. Quantities limited — when we hit the point where I think I won’t be able to make them in time, we’ll close orders. Will post in more detail in the morning, but if you’re seeing this tonight, have fun. 
https://serendib-kitchen.myshopify.com/…/valentines-day…
Reminder note about two cook-alongs this week — Wednesday Jan 27 & Friday January 29! For Friday’s class, I’m tentatively planning to do both a meat and vegetarian (in fact, vegan) option (probably eggplant curry). Classes start at 5:30 CST, and people are welcome to just watch, chat, (and knit or crochet if they like) if they don’t feel like cooking along.
“Join us and special guest Mary Anne Mohanraj (2020 Fiberworld host!) to create the perfect Ceylon Curry mix! Mary Anne will take us through creating this delectable mix and then follow up with a hands-on make-along on January 29th to make the dish (YUM!). Join us for one or both events to put some spice in your new year!”
You can also buy a ‘spice bundle’ on the Fiberworld site, but it would arrive after the class. So if you’re signing up and want to make curry powder along with me, you might want to pick up the ingredients and supplies yourself in advance. You’ll need:
2 rounded t. cayenne (optional)
+ a mortar and pestle or dedicated spice grinder (I use a coffee grinder)
Sign up here: https://fiberworldshow.com
Folks, I am contemplating whether it makes sense to run a little Kickstarter for the Vegan Serendib cookbook. Originally, I hoped the profits from Feast would just cover the production costs, but the pandemic kind of shattered that hope — not anytime soon, anyway.
We’re not doing a print run, just POD, so I don’t need to raise a large amount of money in advance, thankfully. But there ARE some costs — aside from my time (ha ha), there’s Stephanie Bailey’s time editing and producing the book, the cover artist’s cost, etc. I feel like I JUST ran a Kickstarter for the podcast, and maybe my readers have Kickstarter fatigue from me? But maybe this is a completely different set of readers, and I shouldn’t worry about it?
I think we’d keep it very simple — essentially, Kickstarting it would be letting you pre-order it at a small discount — probably free shipping (plus possibly getting it a few months early).
Production costs are something like $3000 or so, so at $40 for a hardcover, 75 people pre-ordering through Kickstarter would cover it. Thoughts?
Cute, hm? Not quite my usual style, but very sweet. Passionfruit-rose soap in a knitted heart for Valentine’s Day.
I’m thinking we can probably put together some kind of Valentine’s Day treat package, but quantities will be very limited — I can maybe do 15 of them? I’m thinking these kinds of things:
– knitted vanilla candle
Pick 7: $30 + shipping
No shipping for local porch pick-up?
And then the option to add on cookbooks, tea towels, gift cards, etc. Comment here if you’d like to be tagged in…
The last of the December treat boxes have gone out, at the top Interstellar level, and I have to say, it’s pretty impressive how much I can jam into a large Priority Mail box. Chock-full! I couldn’t fit it all into one photo — there’s a sweets layer, and a bath layer, and a textiles (infinity scarves, tea towels) & stationery (greeting cards) layer. I hope the recipients are delighted. The next boxes go out in March — theme: Unicorn Garden.
I’m limiting the number of these I offer, because I want to be sure not to exceed my capacity, so there’s only 2 subscriptions left at this level currently.. Reminder that if you sign up at any of my Patreon levels for a year (what a great gift!), you get 4 quarterly shipments sent to you, AND 10% off for the annual subscription.
As I finish up the holiday gifting, I got to put together some gift packages for my staff too. Some version of this will be going out to the Serendib House crew: Stephanie Bailey, Emmanuel Henderson, Darius Vinesar, Cara Bogehegn.
I couldn’t do a quarter of what I do without their help, so thank you to everyone who’s ordered from us this year, and helped me keep employing them, even during a pandemic. They alleviate a lot of stress for me in a variety of ways, and multiply my efforts enormously.
(We really need to take a staff photo sometime, folks!)
One of the fun parts of shopping hyper-local is that someone can place an order for a signed hardcover cookbook + 8 oz. of curry powder, drop you an e-mail asking if they could possibly pick it up today, because they want to gift it to someone tomorrow, and you can say yes, certainly, give me an hour to finish grinding the latest batch of curry powder, and then it’ll be on the porch, waiting for you. Hope the recipient enjoys!
Shipping out the “Milky Way” Patreon treat boxes today, $20 / month, shipped quarterly, so I was aiming for $60 value. Honestly, I think this is more like $100 value or a bit more, if you were buying these items separately, but I want my Patrons to be blown away. I think the recipients will be happy.
These include (roughly left to right):
– five different soaps: knitted mitten (pomegranate-vanilla), knitted tree (fir), ice dragon crystal (sweet orange & naiouli), dragon’s blood egg soap (rosewood, clove, and cinnamon), dragonheart knitted soap (pettigrain and cassia cinnamon)
Whew. Kavi said, as she watched me pick them up, “That’s a lot!” Yes, yes it is.
There’s one more level above this, “Interstellar.” I just need to make a few more items for it…
Join now to get the “Unicorn Garden” treat box in March… link here.
Finished up the knitting-themed treat boxes (employee thank you gifts) and sent them off. They include:
– two little flower bookmarks
This was nice to put together — someone contacted me and asked about treat boxes for their employees; I put together 7 dragon-themed boxes and 4 knitting-themed boxes for them. I can’t scale up to doing this kind of thing in bulk (not without hiring a lot more staff), but doing a few orders like this is fine, and it’s fun composing the boxes.
– Ice dragon soap (sweet orange & niaouli)
– Bronze dragon soap (cedar leather)
– Blood orange taffy (4 pieces)
– Sri Lankan pistachio & cashew love cake (2 pieces)
– Dragonfruit chocolate bar (white chocolate with dragonfruit, citrus & white pepper)
– Pomegranate and cayenne chocolate (2 pieces)
– Sri Lankan gilded cashew milk toffee
– Chocolate-gingerbread with a touch of cayenne gilded dragon egg
– thank you card (also a postcard they can mail)
– two little food bookmarks
