Tamarind-chili scones — starting to bake for the next round of treat boxes. Eliana did most of the baking for these. 🙂
Tamarind-chili scones
Frying eggplant
Frying Eggplant for Sri Lankan sambol.
Thanksgiving Morning Starts Slow Here
Thanksgiving morning starts slow here, but with a nice moment of wrapping up one of my marshmallow samplers and a copy of A Feast of Serendib; the recipient will be picking it up from my porch to take as a Thanksgiving hosting gift.
(I almost wrote ‘hostess’ gift, and then I thought, why should I assume it’s a woman hosting? There’s so much baked into our language defaults…)
The flash sale is still running today (I’ll link in comments), in case you want a marshmallow or confection sampler, BUT ALSO, everything on my site (link also in comments) is now 20% off for Black Friday, which I gather is now being called Black Week in some places?
We’re running the sale from 11/23 -11/30. I don’t run a lot of sales, so if you’ve been thinking of picking up a copy of my cookbooks, now is your chance. (I have only a few copies of the Feast paperback left on hand; I’ll re-order tomorrow, but can’t guarantee I’ll get them here in time for holiday shipping.)
Margins are tiny on small businesses, so we can’t offer the kind of 30-40-etc% discounts you’ll see at big box stores, because we’d actually lose money. But does the big box store pack your marshmallows with love? It does not. 
Marshmallows in sampler: classic passionfruit, peppermint dipped in dark chocolate, mulled apple cider and honey, rolled in powdered sugar and cinnamon
This is exciting.
Carnivore Oak Park is going to start carrying a little of my food-themed jewelry and hand-sewn indie-designed tea towels; perfect for your holiday gifting! I’ll be dropping off these pieces later today (probably around noon), in two options – rich saffron threads, chili flake and gold leaf. Hyper-local – I live just a block away. 
If you’re thinking of gifting, wouldn’t it be great to put together a luxe food-themed basket? Carnivore also carries my Sri Lankan cookbooks (both vegan and non-vegan versions, hardcover and paperback), so you could do a cookbook, some homemade Sri Lankan curry powder, a set of earrings and necklace, and a few tea towels to tie it all together. A gift a foodie would love.
Carnivore also carries a host of interesting little jars you could add in – pickles and jams and sauces (hot or otherwise). And if you’re giving a gift to be opened soon, you might include some of their delicious cheeses – they even offer pre-packaged cheese flights for your sampling pleasure. Have them slice you up some delectable salami, and you have charcuterie ready to go!
This was fun
One of the libraries has a monthly spice club, and they had me do little curry powder packets for their club – Eliana packaged them up for me, with some recipes, etc., and it just came out very cute.
Curry Powder and Vegan Serendib Available at Local Stores
Quick note for locals that there are jars of freshly-made Sri Lankan dark-roasted curry powder (lovely as a grill rub, or on popcorn, as well as in curry) at Carnivore Oak Park, along with signed cookbooks.
And Roshani noticed that there were some hardcovers of Vegan Serendib at The Book Table, so I stopped in and signed those too.
Making Some More Curry Powder For Carnivore
Making some fresh roasted Sri Lankan curry powder this morning — local store Carnivore Oak Park wanted some more cookbooks and curry powder, so I’ll be dropping a few jars off later today.
Assembling Flash Sale Orders
Slept very weirdly last night, just waking up over and over. I feel okay right now, but moving slowly, and I suspect I’ll crash at some point today. Oh well!
I still managed to assemble the flash sale orders this morning. Next steps are packaging them up, adding ice packs to the ones with confections, asking Stephanie to make up paid shipping labels (she needs dimensions and weight for that), and then running them over to the post office.
Tastes Like It’s Good for You
Spent a little time this weekend making elderberry syrup, which is supposed to be a tonic for colds and such. It’s a little bitter until you sweeten it with honey, but it does taste like it’s good for you.
One tip I found said to freeze the berries before trying to remove them from the stems, and that definitely made it much easier to pop them off without making a big mess. Last pic is elderberry syrup and elderflower syrup. Would be amusing to serve paired ice cream scoops made with those.
Living Like a Local
The first few times I went to Hawai’i, Jed treated me to a lot of sightseeing and tourist stuff, which was great — helicopter tour, snuba, visit to the Dole Plantation and the queen’s palace, lots of eating at local restaurants.
This trip, I pretty much went straight to friends’ houses, shopped at local markets for groceries (and poke), and cooked (sometimes re-cooking leftovers to be more curry-ish).
For writing retreats, I love the novelty of travel; it’s very stimulating. But I also like going to the same place again and just living like a local — I end up with a lot more time for focusing on writing.
Avocados from my friend’s tree. So nice. It was producing more avocados than the two of us could keep up with.
