Sautéing onions, green chilies, curry leaves, ginger. See, I love you all so much, I let this go without stirring for ten seconds to get this video, risking burnt onion edges.
Amma would have scolded me.
(Don’t worry, it was fine!)
Brinjal Moju (Eggplant Pickle)
Brinjal Moju (eggplant pickle). Usually served as an accompaniment to rice and curries, but I love it as a little appetizer bite on some toasted naan. Savory / sweet / as spicy as you like it.
Recipe in Vegan Serendib — it’s one of the 40 new recipes I added for that cookbook.
Maybe Don’t Get Up On The Ladder
Making fruitcake? Take that bottle of brandy and pour yourself a nice glug. Add some of the cherry syrup from the jar of glacé cherries, some cherry or orange bitters, some clementine and cherry for garnish. Juice the rest of the clementine into the glass.
Take that with you when you’re wrestling the lights for the tree…maybe don’t get up on the ladder, though.
Lazy Breakfast
Lazy breakfast — about 5 minutes active cooking, 20 minutes in the oven. Dutch baby with berries.
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
I can’t take any credit for this recipe.
I pretty much exactly followed the one I found here.
Came out great – I only regret that I don’t have enough elderberry syrup left from this summer’s berries to make many truffles. Vaguely healthy too – dark chocolate, cashew butter, and elderberries are supposed to be good for warding off winter colds. Shipped some off in the Patreon boxes, and there are a few boxes left for the flash sale. And then that’s it until next summer. 
I’m actually really excited to skip Thanksgiving this year.
I think I must be tired. Kevin got a nice roast that he’s planning to cook, the kids say they only want pumpkin pie (one each, Kavi’s with plenty of whipped cream).
I think I’m going to go to Trader Joe’s and see if they have those caramelized onion cheese pastry bites I love, in which case, I will eat an entire tray by myself over the course of the day. 4 piece serving at 480 calories, 12 pieces in the box, sounds just about right for holiday indulgence.
Don’t worry, I’m still planning on holiday cooking (I haven’t been replaced by a completely different Mary Anne) – our annual Christmas party is just a week-and-a-half later, so I’ve already started working on that. Cookie dough chilling in the fridge, one batch of beef curry cooked and frozen already, much more to come.
Wolfberry Cream Tea Scones
with Wolfberry-Lime Glaze
Okay, so I know that these look weird. I promise you, they are tasty, and not even a little bit moldy, even though they’re kind of grey-blue, which normally might mean something you wouldn’t want to eat. Am I selling it to you yet?
See, I happened across wolfberries (aka black goji berries), and I really wanted to include them in my Autumn Woods treat boxes somehow, so I thought I’d try baking them into scones. They’re superfoods, supposedly, so these are even scones that are somewhat good for you, but yeah – I think I’m going to have to include a note in the treat boxes explaining all this, or my patrons are going to be afraid to eat them.
Not sure I’d make them again – maybe for Halloween? But they really do taste quite nice – the wolfberries lend a lightly fruity flavor to the cream scones. Trust me.
3 c. flour
1 T baking powder
1 t. salt
1/4 c. granulated sugar
2 T wolfberry powder
1 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 c. heavy cream
For (optional) glaze:
1 c. powdered sugar
2-3 T lime juice
1/2 t. wolfberry powder
1. Preheat oven to 425 F. Spray mini scone pan with Baker’s Joy (or butter and flour pan). (Alternately, you can plan to pat dough out in a circle on a greased baking sheet and cut into wedges.)
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and 2 T of wolfberry powder.
3. Combine 1 1/2 c. cream with vanilla. Drizzle liquid mixture over the dry ingredients, stirring gently just to combine.
4. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead a few times. Cut into 16 equal pieces and press into the cavities of the pan.
5. Bake 14-15 minutes, until starting to brown and cooked all the way through; turn out onto a rack to cool. You can serve them warm as is (nice with butter and preserves), but I like boosting the flavor with a lime-wolfberry glaze.
6. Optional: Combine glaze ingredients in a small bowl, and drizzle with a fork over completely cooled scones.
Ruby chocolate owls for the Patreon boxes.
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!
