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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.

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.)

– 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.

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.

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…?

For ease all around, note that if you add or upgrade a tier by November 30th, we’ll send you a December box. (This is a pretty darn good deal — consider it a major holiday sale).

The December treat box has a dragons knitting theme (I don’t know if we’ll always have themes, but this was fun), and I’m including below a tentative list of what I’m planning to include at each level.

Thanks again for all your support! The treat box sales help a lot with paying my part-time staff, which is what’s making it possible for me to put out Vegan Serendib (which is coming along nicely), along with everything else I’m writing.

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Earth ($10 / month (so $30 / quarterly box), fits in a small priority mail box)

(limited: 6 of 30 remaining)

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– handmade bookmark

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Milky Way ($20 / month (so $60 / quarterly box), fits in a medium priority mail box):

– a homemade tea towel (your choice of 5 options)

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– a soft jersey dragonlight infinity scarf

Sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/mohanraj