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(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.

 

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.

 

So, I tried something new last night — I put my laptop in my office at 9 p.m., and didn’t go to get it until 9 a.m. today. I read for an hour and a half before sleep (in the bath, in bed), and when I woke up this morning, I read some more (along with getting kids off to school, watering plants (picture me watering with book in hand), cleaning kitchen counters, etc. It was lovely.

I’ve been running a little too harried the last few weeks for reading much, and I think it’s a bad cycle to get into, because reading (and I mean reading longer work, fiction and memoir, etc., not just little FB pieces) calms me down and helps me think better.

I still felt the compulsion to check social media, so would jump on phone or iPad on occasion (hence the occasional sharing of things to FB), but I am much less likely to lose lots of time if I don’t have my laptop, mostly because I am too lazy to try to write much without a keyboard.

The downside is that when I do share things, it’s such a pain cutting and pasting quotes that I mostly don’t even try, and ditto even commenting on things I post. I’m going to go back and add a bit now to some of the earlier FB shares.

But still, this is better. I have *thoughts* now about Anthony Bourdain’s writing and Ruth Reichl’s. I like Bourdain’s a lot better, and am trying to parse out why. It’s all good.

More soon. 

A few days ago I was talking with a writer friend about cooking. She wanted to write a cookbook of her family’s recipes, but was frustrated that her mother hadn’t taught her to cook.

My mom actually barely taught me how to cook; she would say “Just watch,” when I asked. She had me chop a lot of onions, and stir a lot of onions, and corrected me as I did that wrong (generally working too hastily, too carelessly).

Amma also told me a handful of recipes (usually without much in the way of measurements), but that was about it, in terms of explicit teaching.

But I ate her food every day for twenty years. More and more, I’m realizing that the real cooking lessons were embedded there. Amma cooks beautifully, deliciously, and as a result of all those meals, my mouth knows how our food is supposed to taste at its best.

Also, sitting around with her and my many aunties after a party, critiquing the dishes, was an education in itself. 

Woot! Our first GoodReads giveaway for A Feast of Serendib is live! (Over a hundred people have put in a request already, which is very cool. 🙂 )

Link to giveaway: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/303738-a-feast-of-serendib

Kevin and I have been talking a lot lately about the best use of my time as a writer / cookbook author, whether it’s worth making and shipping sweets.

I was talking to Chef Roel Estanilla at local Filipino pop-up pig & fire about some of these issues too — he makes these amazing ube cookies, and people have been asking if he’ll ship them. And I know Amanda Daly already has people asking if she’ll ship her delectable bagels (soon to be sold at The Daly Bagel in Oak Park!) But it’s not easy to make the math work out.

For example, hosting a sale like the current Valentine’s sweets sale takes me about, oh, 16 hours of cooking, tracking sales, communicating with people, packing things, actually mailing them.

If I make about $300 profit doing that (after taking out cost of supplies and shipping), that’s about $20 / hr as an hourly rate, which isn’t terrible, but honestly, my writing hourly rate is much higher, generally — somewhere between $50 – $100 / hr.

So holding these sales doesn’t make a lot of sense, money-wise, and of course, one thing we learned from the Kickstarter was that I had *way* too many rewards levels and really underestimated how much time handmade rewards took to make. Slow-roasting and grinding and packaging curry powder takes significant time! We’re pretty committed to not doing that kind of Kickstarter again, now that we have a better understanding of just how much time goes into it — it kind of ate my fall.

But when we were talking about all this yesterday, Kev pointed out that even if it doesn’t make a lot of money, hourly rate-wise, if I actually *enjoy* the cooking experiments and coming up with new recipes and having a quiet Saturday in the kitchen, puttering, that’s worth something too. It’s certainly nice to have something productive to do that doesn’t require staring at a computer screen, as so much of my work does, so the variation is worth something, even if it’s less profitable overall. (The kids like helping sometimes, and consuming the sweet experiments…)

And then I pointed out that it’s also good advertising, of course — posting about the sale gives me a reason to talk about the cookbook again. Any author can tell you that part of the reason there’s so much emphasis on book launch is that after that, it’s much harder to come up with good reasons to talk about your book. “It’s new!” is worth shouting about. “It’s been out a month!” is much less so. 🙂

So we have a very tentative plan to keep doing these sales, off and on. Only when I’m not feeling super-pressed for time, probably no more than once a month. Maybe less often this year, once the book tour details get finalized, since for at least some of those events, I’ll be making sweets and such to serve at book tour parties.

I would actually *love* to have some of my sweets out in the world more broadly, and there’s a little dream where I find someone to partner with who actually wants to take my recipes and make them in a more serious production-oriented way as part of a small business. It’d be awesome to sell them in local shops like the Happy Apple Pie Shop, Sugar Beet Food Co-op, Carnivore Oak Park, Wise Cup, etc.

The same thing with the curry powder, actually — wouldn’t it be awesome to have the curry powder (and sweets) available in Whole Foods? I’m picturing a Serendib Kitchen line, with pretty packaging and all.

(Oh, dreams of world food domination. You tempt me.)

But that’s definitely a more serious production than I have time for this year, and possibly ever — I’d really need someone else who wanted to do it, someone who was both a good cook and with good business skills, who could be my partner on that. I guess this post is both a warning that I won’t be doing these sales very often, and a little bit of an invitation too — if that business partner is maybe you, we should talk. 🙂