with Mary Anne Mohanraj
Packed up the first of the local Mother’s Day treat packages — lily-of-the-valley soap and bath salts, baked goodies and confections. And locals get a little potted lily-of-the-valley too. Supplies limited — I think I can do 4 more before I run out of cookies. I’m done with baking for a bit…need to get back to writing. 
(Treat boxes will return in June — we’ll open up ordering for them next week. I think the theme will be dragons.)
Details here:
Spent the morning packing up and setting out Mother’s Day treat packages for shipment. It was a bit of a squeeze, getting them all done in time, and I had to enlist Kevin into cookie-dough making because I was running short on time and getting physically tired, but in the end, we made it. Whew.
I’m still taking orders on the Shopify site, but can no longer guarantee shipping by Mother’s Day. Locals, if you’d like a little potted lily-of-the-valley (traditional Mother’s Day flower) to go with your order, I’d be happy to include that. (I’m slowly digging mine up and replacing with native ground cover, so I have plenty to spare…)
Mask orders are open on the site too, but please note that I’m at LEAST 3 weeks out on sewing masks now. So only order if you are feeling very patient.
Packing up the Mother’s Day treat boxes for shipping out tomorrow — this is the medium box. Kevin periodically asks me whether it’s actually worth the amount of time and effort I put into this, and so I feel like I should note for the record that strictly speaking, it isn’t. I have to run the numbers at some point, but I’m guessing I barely break even on doing these boxes. So why do them?
a) It means that when I’m doing recipe development, I can make back some of the costs of ingredients and time to try variations until I settle on a recipe I really like. It’s a shame I can only do that for items that I can ship — I can’t easily send out curries! The plan for Feast is that we’re going to release smaller cookbooks in future months, including one for sweets that I’m hoping to have ready by October or so, in time for holiday baking. So everyone who’s ordering these boxes, thanks — you’re helping me develop more and better recipes for that! (Which also means I can post the recipes, which feel like tiny gifts to the world in the midst of all this.)
b) it’s a nice break from the computer — especially now, during pandemic times, it’s really easy for me to spend most of the day sedentary. For the first month or so, I spent so much time on converting my classes to online versions, not to mention researching masks and mutual aid, that my poor Fitbit was shouting at me that I was only getting 2K steps a day or so. Just lots and lots of sitting. Baking is much more physical, and when I mix cooking and gardening into my day, I feel physically better at the end of it.
c) I just like sending out presents. I mean, I know people have paid for these items, but it still feels like sending out presents, you know? Here’s everything that’s going into a medium box this time around:
1 Lily-of-the-valley soap
1 Lily-of-the-valley bath salt
1 Lavender soap
1 Lavender bath salt
5 Spiced Chocolate cookies
5 Jaggery Chai Spice cookies
5 Lime and Rosewater Shortbread cookies
1 five-piece set of assorted chocolates, marshmallows, and cashew milk toffee
1 set of five postcards
Fun to wrap up, fun to ship out. I mean, if I were doing thousands of them, it would be less fun, but I’ve limited it to 10 boxes each, max, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
And as a bonus, sometimes people add on books — the box I just wrapped also took a copy of The Stars Change and a copy of Feast, the one I’m doing next wants a copy of Perennial. More people reading my books = yay! If they eat some lime shortbread while they’re reading them, even better.
Please order by end of today if you want them shipped out in time for Mother’s Day! Here is the link:
My vanilla beans were a little dry, so I ended up rehydrating them in warm water for the weekend’s cookie baking (for the Mother’s Day treat packages, ordering deadline today for shipping, btw). Worked fine, and I do love the specks of actual vanilla bean in the dough. But I admit, I was pretty excited that my order of Penzey’s double-strength pure vanilla arrived on Saturday. Vanilla BOMB. Sometimes you need a one-two punch, or even one-two-three.
For the lime shortbread cookies, I ended up using lime juice, lime zest, and citric acid to get the flavor I wanted. Most lemon / lime sweets aren’t tangy enough for my taste — investing in the bag of citric acid has been very helpful to my kitchen experiments!
Stephanie took a little time this morning to update the listing for our Mother’s Day treat boxes, so people have a better idea of what’s actually in them, and we’ve added a Small size too. Please order by Monday lunchtime if you’d like them shipped in time for Mother’s Day!
(Porch pick-up is also available for locals, though I’m not quite sure how we handle the shipping costs; I think we’d reimburse them to you? Still figuring out the details of the new Shopify store.)
(Note — my previous boxes included Feast — this one doesn’t, so I can fit in more sweets and soaps instead. So if you want the cookbook, that should be added on separately.)
Small Boxes – $27.99 ($19.99 + $8 shipping)
1 Lily-of-the-valley soap
1 Lily-of-the-valley bath salt
3 Spiced Chocolate cookies
3 Jaggery Chai Spice cookies
3 Lime and Rosewater Shortbread cookies
1 five-piece set of assorted chocolates, marshmallows, and cashew milk toffee
1 set of five postcards
Medium Boxes – $49.99 ($34.99 + $15 shipping)
1 Lily-of-the-valley soap
1 Lily-of-the-valley bath salt
1 Lavender soap
1 Lavender bath salt
5 Spiced Chocolate cookies
5 Jaggery Chai Spice cookies
5 Lime and Rosewater Shortbread cookies
1 five-piece set of assorted chocolates, marshmallows, and cashew milk toffee
1 set of five postcards
Large Boxes – $74.99 ($54.99 + $20 shipping)
1 Lily-of-the-valley soap
1 Lily-of-the-valley bath salt
1 Lavender soap
1 Lavender bath salt
1 Rose soap
1 Rose bath salt
7 Spiced Chocolate cookies
7 Jaggery Chai Spice cookies
7 Lime and Rosewater Shortbread cookies
2 five-piece sets of assorted chocolates, marshmallows, and cashew milk toffee
1 set of five postcards
Question. When I ship out my home-roasted curry powder in a plastic bag (a cheaper option for me and customers than shipping a jar in a box), it is VERY pungent.
People usually like that fine, if they’re ordering curry powder, but it does perfume the entire package, which is a potential issue if they’re also ordering masks (which I hope people are washing with soap-and-hot water on arrival before use), and more so if they’re also ordering bath salts and soaps (which have their own scents).
Any thoughts on how better to segregate scents? I can try double-bagging the curry powder, and/or plastic-bagging the bath products (kind of hate to do the latter, as it’s a less attractive presentation, but needs must, I suppose), but wondering if there’s something not obvious to me that I’m not thinking of.
Lunch — grilled ramps, roasted asparagus, avocado, omelette. Mmm…and it’s even beautiful enough to eat outside today. After three grey and cold days, the sunshine is very welcome.
Okay, so here’s my newest thing, and don’t even start with the whole “Mary Anne, you already do too much,” because a) I know, and b) my goal is to do this as low-effort as possible and make other people do most of the work, especially Stephanie, and c) it really does feed very well into everything else I do, so shhh… (Also, the semester will be over in a week, so now is an excellent time to poke at this.)
I’d like to start a new magazine. (I say magazine, but I kind of mean magazine / podcast / website — is there a word for that? Broad cultural thing.)
I don’t have a name for it yet. One option is to just call it Serendib, staying on brand. The other is to pick something that’s less directly identified with me. I’ve toyed with words like “Heritage” (which has the problem of being co-opted by the conservatives, and maybe we can’t get over that, but it annoys me, because heritage is such a powerful concept, and they shouldn’t get to own it). Or “Hearth” (which I kind of love, but there’s this Magnolia Hearth and Home line at Target, and maybe that’s too confusing?) Naming is difficult — I could use help with that.
What I’m imagining is sort of “Granta meets Martha Stewart Living Meets Progressive Politics.” I’ve gotten so interested in domesticity lately, but in very particular ways. I want a publication that does the kind of educational work that Milk Street does for food, but also does that for gardening, crafting, teaching, game design…just ‘making’ generally.
(This would work in harmony with the Maram Makerspace project — we’re hoping to have a place in Forest Park open as soon as social distancing allows. Possibly as early as June for limited use. Another possibility for a name is ‘Maram,’ which is Tamil for tree. Imagine the outstretching branches, and the roots.)
I want a place that takes the labor women do seriously, and that will highlight how labor is always political — think of how Samin Nosrat curated her Best American anthology collection. I’d like to be able to showcase work like what Paul Goyette has been doing locally with photographing political events. I want Angeli Primlani and Nicole Walker thinking about the environment. And I want poetry and fiction in the mix.
This sounds huge. It is huge. But I think it can start very small — my tentative plan would be to start with a website and Facebook group and maybe a podcast, invite some contributors to start posting there, and then see if people want to follow it, see if it has legs.
I’ve been getting so much comfort out of Samin Nosrat’s “Home Cooking” podcast and “Staying at Home with Emily and Kumail,” I’d like to see if we can provide something similar. Warm, funny, welcoming, thoughtful, ardently progressive. Helping to dream a better world.
That last bit is where the SF comes in too — I would kind of love to have a column of SF stories as part of this — both ‘hope punk’ and darker visions. Definitely landing on the literary side, with attention to language and style.
Can I jam everything I’m passionate about into one place? I think I can.
Locally, I’ve already roped Maria Teresa McKee and Laura Young into this — Maria’s been doing yeoman’s work in Cicero and on our local garden club group doing teaching videos about seed starting, and Laura’s been doing the same with sourdough making.
There are people doing all kinds of interesting work, and I’d mostly like to collate it, give it a shape, and find it a central location that’s easy to access.
I’m also imagining a sort of local / global focus that’s a little hard to describe, but imagine each issue offering something local to the Oak Park area, grounding us in this place where I live, but also including something from far away.
So this is really a very early brainstorming thread, I suppose. Tell me what you think of this — what ideas does it spark for you, what seems problematic, what should I name it, what would you want to write for it, if you’d be interested in editing for it, or helping to organize it, etc.
Let’s talk.
(Photo of me just ’cause I needed a photo to put in here to make it more visible. Good morning! And oh, while I have you, note that from 3-4 CST, we’ll be doing a craft-and-chat that you’re all welcome to; Zoom details in the Serendib group.)
This was fun — I ordered a lighting kit a while back because I had started getting really frustrated by how hard it was to light food photos well sometimes. I mean, some days I can go outside for natural light, or to a window, but sometimes it’s night when I’m cooking, etc. and so on.
I’m reading a book on lighting food photos, and he suggests that even using white card stock can help to bounce light helpfully, but I thought umbrella lights would likely work much better than me trying to balance pieces of card stock. So I ordered this kit months ago, and finally set it up today, and used it to take photos of mask fabrics. Helpful!
My tentative plan is that if we manage to get the makerspace up and running, that I’ll loan this out through there, so that members can borrow a light kit to take home, or anyone can walk in (on our free walk-in days) to use it on-site. I also have neon green fabric, and am planning to get a bar to go across the top of the stands, so we’ll have a green screen for Zoom calls or making videos or whatever.
It’s honestly a little hard to imagine the makerspace being open and ready for use anytime soon, but maybe with restrictions being lifted, it’s not unreasonable to think that we might be able to find some way of using the space without congregating.
Maybe a limited set of members who clock in and out individually, using it as a workspace away from kids, wiping down everything they use? I’m not sure when that will be feasible, but surely someday. Can’t hurt to start planning for it now, I think.
Tentative heads-up for next flash sale. Not exactly a flash sale? This week, Stephanie is setting up Shopify for me, so it should make it much easier to order books, etc. from me directly going forward. (And let me just say, it astonishes me that she manages to get any work done at all with two small kids at home in the midst of all this.)
But we’re hoping to have it up soon, and then will be taking orders for Mother’s Day — order by Sunday May 3 to ensure shipping out by Tuesday May 5, in time for delivery (within the U.S.) before Mother’s Day. If you comment here, I’ll be sure to tag you in when the store is ready.
Books (cookbook, romance, sci-fi), pretty botanical soaps and bath salts, sweet treats, postcards, woot! Down the line, also more paper goods (cards, bookmarks), and who knows what else. I love the idea of having a Serendib line of…stuff.
However, having too many options makes it very complicated and confusing for me, and sometimes I make mistakes. For example, this month I very sadly included a complimentary (but accidental) scented bath scrub in a food-only package recently, which ended up going to someone with scent sensitivities, AND the darn thing leaked (I won’t be using those tins again!), ruining her entire package. I’ve apologized and will be either refunding or giving her a free package in the next batch (her choice), but I feel so bad for the disappointment. I don’t want to risk doing that again!
The tentative plan is to do four basic packages:
– medium food treats only
– medium food & bath treats
– large food treats only
– large food & bath treats
With add-on options:
– curry powder
– books (Perennial, The Stars Change, Feast) (signed and/or personalized, of course, if desired)
– fabric mask (possibly)
– Feast postcards
I’m hoping that isn’t too complicated for me. (The Shopify platform will, I think, make it easier, since we can print off organized lists.) Executive function is not at its best right now — I’ll be so happy when Stephanie can come back to my house to help me make sure that the right things go in the right packages. But maybe I can talk Kavi into helping me with it this time around. She’s a smart cookie.
This morning’s batch of soaps are rose and passionfruit, 2/3 shea butter and 1/3 pure glycerin. Limited supplies of all these goodies, as I’m still hoping to spend at least half of my days writing & teaching.
