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Mascot paid me! Mascot is my hybrid publisher for the cookbook — they handle book distribution through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and Amazon. We started taking pre-orders in January or so, I think, so this is about 8 months in, and is the first real check; they have to collect the money from those places before passing it on to me.

They’ve sold 431 copies in this statement, which translates to about $6700. I’ll have to run some more numbers at the finance meeting on Thursday, but this will definitely go a long way toward paying my part-time Serendib Press staff through the end of the year, and should mean Kevin and I don’t have to loan the press money. Big relief.

We’re still planning to re-launch the cookbook post-Covid, with a book tour and all, but this goes a long way towards our goal of ‘not losing masses of money on the project.’

Let me take this moment to thank everyone who’s taken the time to review my book — I’m sure that helped! I just glanced at the page on Amazon, and there are 15 reviews — all 5-stars. I’m honored and humbled. Thank you for loving and supporting my book!

I should ask Stephanie how many copies we still have in their warehouse — I expect sales will slow down dramatically, given most of these happened pre-Covid when we had the early press for the book, though it’s hard to predict. I want to guesstimate about 1300 copies left there? Maybe?

Regardless, I might buy myself something pretty to celebrate — probably something cooking-related.

Pictured is something else pretty I bought recently, and happen to be wearing today — a Ceylon rupee from 1944, turned into a pendant. Maybe it’s good luck; money to bring the money! Although it does have King George on the flip side, which is perhaps a slightly weird choice for someone trained in post-colonial literature… I can wear it ironically, though, right?

Happiness is the second shipment of Feast cookbooks arriving at your door, because you’ve sold out of the first shipment.

(Of course, now I have to carry them down to the basement. Book boxes are heavy. That’ll take care of some of today’s exercise…)

I was a nervous wreck before yesterday morning’s live TV thingie, and as a result, even though I’d gotten 7 hours of sleep the night before, was absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day.

I didn’t even try to work — I binge-watched Private Practice and lay on the couch or in bed all day. It’s a little shocking just how tired I was from only stress.

So I guess I wanted to note it, and put it out there as a reminder — the pandemic is stressful, e-learning with kids is stressful, the upcoming November election is stressful in America, and of course, many of us have other big stressors in our personal lives, aside from what’s happening globally.

It takes a toll on your body, on your physical health and capability, as well as mental health.

Go easy on yourselves, folks. Lower expectations where you can, for yourself and for those around you. We are still in the midst of a global disaster. If the e-learning is making everyone cry, take a break; it’ll be okay.

We could all use a gentle autumn.

*****

(And hey, if you missed the TV thingie, I’ll link it here. It actually went pretty well, even if I did run out of time (and apparently they asked a question I couldn’t hear, so to be clear, you want unsweetened coconut for this!). I think I’d be less stressed if I get the chance to do this again — it was just a lot of firsts to cope with all at once, with new tech, etc.)

Little free pantry update, and a request for help — I’ve been keeping an eye out it, and in the last few days, other people have contributed food items (thank you!), and two things have gone — peanut butter and canned tuna. I checked some lists of what food pantries are most in need of, and those are high on the list, so I’ve ordered some more, and we’re going to try to keep those in stock there; I’ll be adding canned chicken too.

Again, if you’re in a position to give funds, locally, Beyond Hunger is a great organization to donate to — they have far more reach than we do, and can buy in bulk and make your money go further. The main point of having a LFP is that it’s hyper-local, that we can try to take care of our immediate neighbors on surrounding blocks.

To that end, I want to add some flyers to our LFP telling them what other options are out there. Someone who’s just moved to the neighborhood might not know about Beyond Hunger, or about Oak Park Mutual Aid.

And while I know that some of the churches do food distribution, I don’t know any specifics. If you’re local, can you help me crowdsource a list of relevant local resources? Dropping relevant info in the comments would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I need to go revise the last chapter of my novel and I’m in major procrastination mode. Here, I’m going to leave a question, turn off FB for an hour, and come back to your lovely responses. It’ll be a nice reward.

What’s your favorite sandwich?

Mine currently is a toasted open-face tomato and cheddar on multigrain, with honey mustard, salt and pepper. DAMN, I want one now.

I may have a different favorite tomorrow.

Okay, folks, I’m starting to feel a little stressed about my live cooking segment on TV this Sunday morning. Talk me down, because being prepared is the best way I know to battle this kind of imposter syndrome and anxiety.

Give me your best tips for being on TV, what should I do to prepare, etc. and so on. I assume starving myself for three days so I might look marginally thinner is not a good option, so skip that, but anything else? Help.

I’m already thinking I set up the kitchen in advance, with the iPad on its new stand, have Kavi or Kevin record (whichever one I’m going to make get up with me on Sunday morning at 7 a.m.), and do a test run?

*****

Friday:
• get groceries
• cook dishes that will be accompanying kale sambol I’m actually cooking (Sri Lankan red rice + basmati, either beef and potato curry or beef smoore, maybe a carrot curry? Trying to think of dishes that will look pretty on a plate, but also taste good together.)
• color hair (I’m thinking blue!)

Saturday:
• decide on clothes (I’m probably wearing a bright blue top, possibly with a grey short-sleeve cardigan, and small gold earrings. I think I’m reasonably settled on that.)
• do test run with tech, and in the process:
• make a finished version of the kale sambol to display in case the 4 minutes of time runs tight
• clean kitchen
• plug in iPad, make sure it’s charged

Sunday morning:
– awake by 6 a.m.
– do hair and make-up
– prep chopped kale, chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, so I don’t have to chop it all live
– dress in clean clothes
– set up iPad / stand, lighting if needed
– 7:35 — call in. go, go, go.

Hey, so I’m a little slow on posting about this, sorry! But I’m going to be offering two classes at Fiberworld. I’ll also be doing a talk on South Asian textile arts (intro-level, as I’m no expert!), a poetry reading, and hosting their fashion show. Will be fun. 

Thursday Aug 20, 3-5 p.m. EDT: Knitted Sweets — Featuring knit & crochet cookies and knit chocolate bars, we’ll show you how to use embossed rollers and molds to make fun textile-inspired treats for your next stitch-and-bitch, or just to enjoy at home.

Friday Aug 21, 3-5 p.m. EDT: Sewing the Deaconess-Style Pleated Face Mask — Bring your sewing machine, fabric, and tools if you want to sew along with us, or just come watch as we talk and walk through the steps for creating a mask with two layers of 100% cotton, a sewn-in layer of filter fabric, and a metal nose piece.

(Not sure of the time of this one yet.)
South Asian Textile Arts

Mary Anne presents an introduction to a few elements of South Asian textile arts. She’ll start with kantha stitching: similar to sashiko in appearance, traditional Bengali kantha embroidery uses a simple running stitch to bind light pieces of cotton together, traditionally used to salvage old cotton saris and turn them into lightweight throws, cushions, and more. Bring an embroidery needle, some floss, and some scrap pieces of cotton if you’d like to stitch along as Mary Anne demonstrates how she salvages remnants of mask fabric and transforms them into charming bookmarks.

She’ll also show you some variations on traditional woven sari fabrics (including colorblocked handloomed Sri Lankan saris from her homeland), and discuss some aspects of what’s involved in bringing traditional South Asian motifs into your textile work, such as knit and crocheted designs.

*****

Class pricing and convention registration at the Fiberworld site. Register here: https://fiberworld2020.com/

One thing that I’ve been struggling with is how much sheer time editing video and audio takes. I pay Darius, who does the first pass on editing, then for the cooking videos, both Stephanie and I review the edited version, and there usually are little clean-up things to add, so I don’t want to skip that step. But it takes a little time. One video / week, usually under 30 minutes, so not too bad, but still.

And for the MRAH podcast, again, Darius does the first pass, but then I’m the one doing the second. And I don’t want to skip that. Even if I left it to Darius to figure out where good break points would be in the episode (because Benjamin and I often record for 2 hours, and that’s a LONG time, so we’re planning to break episodes into part 1, part 2, etc.), he really can’t easily do the annotating.

That part’s important to me — when we mention books, authors, genre conventions, etc. and so on, I want to be sure the show notes are linking to all of those correctly; it’s particularly important because all of this will become part of the Portolan Project too, and will be, I think, useful to people studying SF (either as creative writers or as literature).

So I have to put in the time, which means recording the podcast takes about 3 hours on Sunday morning for the recording, and then at least 3 hours to annotate it. That’s a LOT of time.

I did figure out that it worked okay to review a cooking video while cutting mask fabric, which is more efficient than my watching soap-y Private Practice re-runs (don’t ask why I’ve somehow ended up watching this at the end of this pandemic summer, I think I just wanted to gaze at pretty people making way too much angst for themselves and turn off my brain).

It’s a little tricky, though, because I do have to keep at least glancing at the screen, to make sure that the little measurement notes and such that Darius adds in are accurate. It may work better for editing podcasts, which is the real time-sink right now.

No real conclusions, just noting that editing text is a LOT FASTER than editing audio / video. Brave new world. 

Another lovely piece on Feast, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The flavorful, and often overlooked, foods of Sri Lanka

A new cookbook explores the distinct flavors of the multiethnic island nation off the southern coast of India.

Well, this is lovely.  Check it out!

‘A Feast of Serendib’: A culinary journey to Sri Lanka is a celebration of diversity

One way to satisfy a yen to travel in these lock-down times is to explore the foreign cuisines. The newly published cookbook, “A Feast of Serendib,” (Mascot Books, $40) offers a trip to the far-away island of Sri Lanka.