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Bay Area peeps — trying to schedule book tour. TWO QUESTIONS:

1) I’ll be there March 4-8 for FogCon in Walnut Creek, and may have time for a book event. What bookstores / libraries would you recommend in: Marin / Sausalito / San Francisco / Oakland / Berkeley?

• I’m going to contact Omnivore, the cookbook store, later today

2) I’ll be there March 23 – 29, visiting family and friends for spring break, mostly in South Bay, but also up in Marin. What bookstores / libraries would you recommend in: South Bay and Peninsula?

• Jed mentioned Kepler’s?

Contacts particularly welcome, if you happen to know people on staff.

ALSO: If you’re willing to be part of my Bay Area book tour crew (I need a jazzier name for this!), helping to publicize and round up people to attend, would love to know that too! I’ll be sure to send you details so you don’t miss anything, and I may even be able to bring along some special treats for you. I’d love to speak to a packed room. 🙂

[goes off, brainstorming ‘book tour crew’ names. Something with a Sri Lankan mythical beast? Garudas, makaras. Won’t mean anything to most of y’all, though, so that’s a shame. Something with food? Oh, naming things is hard.]

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all. One of the best bits of the internet is sharing these holidays with you all.

Funniest bit of this morning — Anand was so focused on the show he was watching on his iPad that he walked right past this multiple times (getting his breakfast quesadilla, feeding the pets), before Mommy finally said, “Anand, Happy Valentine’s Day!” And then he looked up and saw this and ran over.

Both kids were most excited by the chocolate-covered strawberries (Kavi is packing some of those and the raspberries up to take to school right now to share with her friends), but the dried fruit will keep better.

If we weren’t hosting an event on Sunday (SLF Chicago chapter meeting, all SF/F readers, writers, and geeks welcome), I’d probably end up freezing some of it for a party (or a rainy day) down the road.

Little hearts courtesy PaperSource — I’ll save them for a craft project for me or the kids…

So, a big question for those who like my stuff. Food stuff, writing stuff, etc. Be my market research. 🙂

Kev and I have been talking about what’s manageable for me in terms of cooking and shipping and the like, and we’re thinking one weekend / month is generally do-able for having one of these little flash sales of books and sweets and soaps and the like. Serendib Kitchen / Press / Home / etc.

And we were planning that, but then Kel Bachus suggested that I might want to think about also setting it up as a quarterly subscription, so that people who knew they wanted the little things I make could sign up for them in advance and be sure they would get them, rather than possibly missing out on flash sales.

Which reminded me of back when Gavin and Kelly did their chapbook, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, which I loved, and they offered one subscription level that was the chocolate subscription, which was so brilliant and indulgent — you’d get your magazine, but also get a lovely interesting bar of chocolate to enjoy with it. I loved it.

So with these things in mind — is there interest? I’m honestly not sure what this would look like, but something like:

Base level:
– a little printed chapbook of domestic writings — recipes & gardening and maybe home decor, probably with some fiction and/or poetry thrown in
– some kind of confectionery, probably a new recipe
– a tiny surprise present of some kind — maybe a set of postcards, maybe a little crocheted flower, who knows…

And then maybe some upgrade options:

a) some kind of bath product (soap, bath salts, lip balms, that kind of thing)
b) existing books
c) curry powder

(I’d plan on hiring someone local for packing and shipping and possibly order management too — in fact, whether I do the subscription or not, it’d be good for me to look into that. A nice energetic college student would be ideal, someone who doesn’t mind coming by my place and hauling boxes one weekend / month. If you know someone like that, let me know… That’d probably be something like $15 / hr.)

I don’t know pricing for the subscription yet — would depend a lot on shipping costs, etc. Maybe $30 + shipping for the base level, per shipment? (I’m thinking quarterly at first, can possibly move to monthly if it goes well.) If there’s interest, I can talk to Kevin and Stephanie to figure out if we actually have capacity to do this.

The nicest thing about it, from my point of view, is that I think I can use it as a way of collecting and generating material for the larger nonfiction book I’ve been wanting to work on…

Would you be interested in that kind of subscription, for you or as a gift?

What do you think? Should I do it?

(Can I encourage Americans to make a little extra effort to patronize Chinese restaurants esp. but also generally Asian restaurants right now? News reports that they’re getting hit with a notable downturn in customer business across the U.S. due to unfounded coronavirus fears.)

Lunch date with Kevin at Mama Thai, which is a convenient two block walk away (if that). The lunch special (small appetizer, small soup, entree) is actually too much food for us if we both order it; we ended up taking the potstickers home for Anand, who adores them.

And because I added their steamed shumai off the main menu (which I adore and cannot resist — sometimes I just get myself two orders of shumai for dinner), we ended up taking the green curry chicken and rice home too, and ate it for dinner.

I did doctor it a bit — it was a little watery for my taste (I’m guessing they have a big vat of it going for the lunch special, which is totally reasonable, but means it’s not their best cooking generally). So I cooked it down for another 5-10 minutes on the stovetop and stirred the rice in, which took it to just the concentrated spicy green goodness I was craving. I would’ve taken a photo, but I ate it too fast. 🙂

It’s not the smilingest photo of Kevin, but I include it because he is carefully taking all the mushrooms out of his tom yum soup and putting them in my bowl. It is sad that he doesn’t appreciate mushrooms, but on the other hand, MOAR mushrooms for me…

Valentine’s present for Kev and the kids: 30 minutes with fresh strawberries, dried apples, pears, mangos, crystallized ginger, and four kinds of chocolate. 

*****

Same as previous, plus 30 minutes more, drizzled chocolate, powdered dehydrated raspberries, and fresh raspberries stuffed with white chocolate chips. Everything but the ruby chocolate (which I get on Amazon in a big bag) picked up this afternoon at Target. 🙂

Sunday dinner was Kavi’s turn, and she picked sushi, which is sort of a funny choice, given that the only sushi she has historically been willing to even try are California rolls. But okay. Kevin doesn’t eat fish, Anand wasn’t sure he wanted to even try sushi, so this was going to be interesting.

But it actually turned out okay, in large part because I got my groceries at H Mart, which is I think mostly Korean with a good supply of Japanese. They had everything I needed in easy packaging, including some already marinated beef, which Kevin could grill for us, and which I was pretty sure would be a reliable way to feed Anand. (They also had both American cucumber and Korean cucumber — the latter is lovely, with a delicate, sweet flavor.)

The kids were startled by the intense scent of the seasoned rice vinegar hitting the rice — we almost lost them then.

But they had a blast deciding what they wanted to put on their sushi, and rolling it up. Whew. Anand went for the sweet omelette, grilled meat, and bell pepper. Kavi was indignant that they’d made eggs sweet — she was not expecting that. She didn’t even try for a California roll, in the end, going for beef, bell pepper, and avocado. Kevin did cucumber and avocado, and I indulged myself with salmon, avocado, cucumber, and tobiko.

The kids did not try the wasabi, soy sauce, or pickled ginger. We’re going to have to ease them into other cuisines, clearly.

The kids loved getting to be artistic with their food. Anand hit upon the idea of using tobiko (which he had no intention of eating) to decorate his plate, and Kavi was envious that he’d managed to coordinate the tobiko, the bell pepper, and his orange shirt.

(I ended up eating his tobiko. No food waste in this house!)

Overall, the kids probably liked the flavors of this the least of the 6 family dinners we’ve done so far this year (Daddy’s baked chicken wrapped in cheese and prosciutto is the standout hit so far), but they did eat enough to count as a meal, which was good. And they want to do it again, which is great — a lot of this is simple unfamiliarity. If we keep having food from other cuisines, their palates should get more accustomed.

Fingers crossed, anyway. I *love* sashimi, so the more I can get them headed in that direction, the happier I’ll be. I was in my 20s the first time I had sushi, and the guy I was dating had to coax me in with California rolls because I was intimidated by the raw fish concept. How things have changed!

(We don’t usually have phones at the table for family dinner, but in this photo, Kavi is photographing her food for her Instagram feed. Like mother, like daughter…)

Mango chocolates — I took dehydrated mango and crushed it in the food processor (thanks for the tip, Pooja Makhijani!), then stirred that into melted dark chocolate. Tasted it, good, but could use more punch — I added some amchur, Indian dried green mango powder. That brought nice tang to it, excellent choice. Still could use more mango (MOAR MANGO), so chopped up some dried mango and stirred that in too. Now we’re cooking! Mango-y goodness.

From that point it was was just pouring the chocolate into the pretty molds, and we could’ve stopped there and been happy. But why stop there? We decided to gild the lily and add a bit of edible gilt to the tops. I also did some in the half-round molds and drizzled white chocolate over those. Just ’cause. Making confections really is like playing sometimes.

The final texture was interesting — a bit of crunch from the larger pieces of dehydrated mango, along with the chew from the dried mango. I really liked how these came out, and they’re also Kavi-approved. I’m afraid I didn’t write down measurements this time, so I can’t give you a proper recipe — sorry! I will if I make them again.

Anand does say he likes fresh mango better; he’s the fruit addict in our household, even though he also loves sweets. You should see him go through a fruit bowl — it’s a thing of beauty. I probably agree with him, actually, but fresh, ripe mango is not always available in wintery Chicago, alas.

These mango chocolates are a pleasant though totally different thing.

Even though this mango cream chocolate confection didn’t work out (details in next post), I do love this photo. The ruby chocolate took an interesting mottled look in the mold, and the way that contrasts with my now ten-year-old zinc countertop — it’s just cool and vaguely science fiction-y. 🙂 When my passions collide…

#chocolatesinspace

I had a sucky afternoon (I don’t know why, but even though there was minimal pain (two injections), the 6 hours dealing with the bone scan at the hospital really got to me today), and am feeling thoroughly sorry for myself. In rotten mood.

I am going to comfort myself with playing Terraforming Mars while watching Anthony Bourdain on Hulu and possibly posting here off and on, I don’t know. Plus demanding the children and Kevin come snuggle me sometimes and leave me completely alone the rest of the time.

Plus chocolate. ALL the homemade chocolate ice cream I have left, with ruby chocolate and mango filling stirred in. I know this isn’t the most attractive photo. Hush, it’s good.