Mary Anne Mohanraj

Of Patreon and cookery: I've been trying to think about what to do with the Patreon, that is both value for money for those supporting it, and of use to me. in 2017, I was mostly using it to motivate me to do Sri Lankan recipes, as I worked on the new cookbook.

In 2018, I tried having my assistant copy over an array of cooking, gardening, textile arts, and writing things, but I struggled a little, esp. with the textile arts, which I do much more rarely normally (and am not nearly as skilled at), and with the gardening, which is seasonal. Even with the writing, I was having Chris post chapters of two books that are unpublished, and we'll finish those out, but once they're done, I don't necessarily have a lot of behind-the-scenes material to share.

I think in 2019, I'm going to focus Patreon on the cooking again; that was satisfying and productive.
That may seem odd, because in theory, Feast is done, and I'm actually going to crowdfund and self-publish the book fairly soon (unless a publisher drops out of the sky), because after doing a bunch of research and talking to agents, it seems like it's almost impossible right now to get a major house to pick up a cookbook unless you have a seriously developed platform -- your own restaurant, a massively popular cooking blog, etc. Which honestly, I can understand -- there are so many great recipes online these days that my own purchase and use of cookbooks has seriously dropped. But I know there are a lot of you who are waiting for this book, and I don't want to make you wait much longer!

But there's still so much more of Sri Lankan cooking for me to learn about -- I expect I'll be learning my whole life. This year, I have two goals for myself; learn how to convert some of my recipes to Instapot (mine arrived yesterday) and put out a little Instapot Sri Lankan cookbook (small-format, like the Vegan and Marshmallow ones), and go deeper into Jaffna regional cookery; I just picked up another Jaffna cookbook at the airport in Sri Lanka, and I'm *so* looking forward to diving in. And I want to try doing more process videos too, so people can really see how to make hoppers, etc. I'm hoping the kids will help with that!

So, that's the main plan for Patreon this coming year -- lots of cooking. I imagine writing, gardening, and other arts will pop up in there, but the attempt to do a daily schedule in 2018 was more frustrating and stressful than helpful. And Feast will be coming...soon-ish? I think so. More on that anon. (Will hire an actual cover designer; this is just to give an idea.)