Serendib Kitchen

Feast sneak peek party help from my wonderful relatives, Marietta Aunty (my mother’s first cousin) and her daughter Genisha. They couldn’t even stay for dinner, but they insisted on helping. It gives my cookbook a little bit of added luck, having their hands in the mix — this is what a Sri Lankan community cookbook should be like.

Feast is meant to be a celebration of our food, culture, community. Any time my mother was cooking for a party, her sisters would be there, helping to cook, exchanging family news and advice in the kitchen, strengthening bonds.

Party prep — I can’t take credit for the gorgeous Turkish delight or passion fruit meringues — I picked them up at Jed’s local grocery store, Piazza (and just cut the Turkish delight up into smaller pieces). But aren’t they pretty? Salmon curry is mine, though Marie Aunty kindly insisted on chopping onions for me! She and Genisha stopped by Jed’s for coffee, and they really didn’t have to cook, but none of the women in my mother’s family are good at sitting still when someone else is working…

Whew — it was a bit of a frantic rush this morning, as I tried to simultaneously figure out on the phone with Heather what was up with the signing up for GSuites for Nonprofits for the SLF and work with Stephanie on getting the review copies ready to send to my high school for their alumni event, to Sophia du Brul, a high school compatriot who is kindly hosting an alumni book party for me, and to Booklist, Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly, for hopeful review.

I’m not sending a review copy to Kirkus, at least right now, because they only review indie-published titles if you pay them — and I understand that they’re deluged, but it’s still frustrating. (Can’t remember the exact amount, but around $400, I think?) For one of the others, they at least give you two options, of either guaranteeing a review by paying them or submitting it and taking your chances. I suppose if they almost never review the latter, that might mean that indie publishers would be better off saving their print/mail costs for the book, but it’s nicer having the option, I think. I suppose I still might suck it up and pay for a Kirkus review, but not right now, as production costs have been mounting steadily.

We’re working on a big chart, which I’ll post when it’s ready. I’ve made a lot of costly mistakes, which is painful, but I’m trying to chalk that up to learning a new business. If I were going to take a publishing seminar, that might cost a few thousand dollars, right? Maybe not, but it’s a comforting illusion, anyway, so don’t take it away from me….

Then all that segued into very quick packing, and now I’m heading into campus to teach my classes, and from there, to the airport. These books are big! I’m delivering about eight copies to a few people who pre-ordered in the Bay Area, and it turns out when I was packing that I can actually only fit about ten copies of the hardcover book in my carry on suitcase + backpack. I think I managed to pack so I didn’t incur extra fees for heavy suitcase — we’ll see! It does mean an extra heavy backpack, so it’s a good thing that though I’m small, I am also MIGHTY. 🙂

I’m going to the Bay Area for the weekend (coming back Monday night), and this really is a personal vacation rather than a business trip, though I’m doing a few book things while I’m there — it’s my very good friend Alex’s 50th birthday, and he and his wife Christa are combining that with a housewarming for their new place. I waffled for a good long time about going, because I wasn’t sure I could afford the time, but one of my big resolutions this year is to invest in significant relationships, for the sake of my own mental health and happiness. So here I go.

Also, this is a threefer, as I get to also stay with Jed for a few days, and even have dinner with my in-laws, who I haven’t seen in many months. Bonus! So good all around, I think, and with any luck, I’ll get a fair bit of work done on the plane too. We’ll see how exhausted I am after teaching; sometimes, it’s draining enough that all I want to do afterwards is sleep. In which case, I’ll do that on the plane instead, or at least doze and watch dumb tv. Rest also good, or so I hear…

***

My new Sri Lankan cookbook, A Feast of Serendib, launches on March 6, 2020, but we’re doing a long, slow pre-launch of the special Kickstarter edition in the interim. Right now, we still have discounted Kickstarter pricing available for pre-orders, along with Kickstarter goodies — you can pre-order here: http://serendibkitchen.com/a-feast-of-serendib/

If you’d like to support the development of more mostly Sri Lankan recipes, I’d love to have you join the cookbook club — for $2 / month, you’ll get recipes delivered to your inbox (fairly) regularly: https://www.patreon.com/mohanraj

And here’s all the foodie social media:

Serendib Kitchen blog: http://serendibkitchen.com
Serendib Kitchen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serendib_kitchen/
Serendib FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/132029834135500/
Serendib FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/mohanrajserendib/

Thanks for your support!

#serendibkitchen

Hardcovers!!! This is what 100 hardcover cookbooks look like. And yes, I pored over it obsessively tonight until I finally found both a typo and a word choice I’d like to edit, but that just means God won’t smite me down for hubris, because otherwise, this cookbook is pretty close to perfect. 🙂

I think I started seriously working on this book in the summer of 2017, so more than two years ago.

A long (but tasty) road.

I am NOT working on the Wilding memoir right now. There’s so much else in the queue ahead of it. Let me just jot down a few notes on things that came into my head in the car on the way back from the doctor…

Five minutes later:

– incident — buying house, destroyed by construction, plants coming up, reported to village by trustee who walked by regularly (so we heard), tried to resist, had to go to court, cried, was fined the smallest fine, had to cut it all down. Gave up and started over, rather than wait another year to figure out what I had (knowing it’d look like weeds in the process)
– cut down tree of heaven (mistake)
– massive tendency to fail to water, cost so many plants!
– layering in hardscape, trees, shrubs, perennials, edibles, annuals, groundcover (correct order?)
– how much grass to leave in front (aesthetics) and back (children playing)
– plan for an organic garden, mostly because of small children and edibles — almost no fertilizer (and only organic), no pesticides or herbicides for seven years
– natives outperforming and crowding out ornamentals
– collecter versus designer (design effects: limit number of plants in garden, plant in odd numbers (3,5,70, plant in paisley
– layered bulbs
– Martha Stewart digs out a massive trench and throws down daffodil bulbs willy nilly
– early spring bulbs and hellebores
– spring garden first, then filling in summer and autumn
– Kirsten’s gift of autumn book (British gardening vs.)
– frustration with garden magazines
– Garden Club question about burdock (paint poison with a paintbrush)
– attempts to espalier fruit trees
– difficulty of planting vegetables when you keep giving over all the sun to flowers
– beneficial non-native versus invasive
– planting the hellstrip instead of green grass
– heavy pollen plants / bees in hellstrip

As I’m pausing in the alley to take a photo of the milkweed pods by my garage, a passing neighbor — “Your garden is so beautiful. Next year, you should plant vegetables too, so we can all get fat.”

🙂

(I’m actually really bad at vegetables. Working on it. My cherry tomatoes are okay this year — I think I’m going to try some on ornamental trellises in the front parkway strip next year. Maybe Atomic Grape, since it’s so pretty.)

Bay Area plans finalized for this weekend. We’re doing potluck dinner at Jed’s house in Mountain View this Friday night, 9/10 — friends, if you didn’t get an invite, let me know — just sent them out!

I should have the Kickstarter editions of my new cookbook Feast of Serendib on hand (definitely the paperback, and hopefully the hardcover, if they arrive on schedule tomorrow), so if you’ve preordered, you can pick them up! If you haven’t pre-ordered yet and want to, you can do so here at the Kickstarter rate: http://serendibkitchen.com/shop/ — but you can also just come hang out with me. No purchase required. 🙂

I’m trying to get better about prepping on the weekend, to make the week easier. I’ve become a big fan of sous vide egg bites, and have three variations I keep in rotation now. Eggs with onion, green chili and cream cheese (Sri Lankan style!); eggs with broccoli and cheddar (vegetables at breakfast, mmm….), and eggs with onions, mushrooms, and swiss. All yum.

Pictured here is an egg scramble I made on a Sunday, after sauteeing a big batch of onions and mushrooms; the rest went into the canning jars, along with beaten eggs seasoned with salt and pepper, plus a nice slice of swiss cheese, making breakfasts for the rest of the week.

This cold is kicking my butt. I completely forgot about Anand’s IEP meeting that I was supposed to go to at 3, and had to call and reschedule, sigh. Bad mom. On the other hand, he’s mostly doing okay in school so far this semester (knock wood), and I did bake the apple cheddar crescent rolls the kids particularly like to surprise him with when he gets home from school today. Good mom! So possibly even‘d out on the kid-happiness scale today? Hard to measure!

#serendibkitchen