Show Notes for Ep. 13 "Food (and/or Cricket) Can Solve Everything"
This time around, the impetus for this discussion is Mary Anne’s new cookbook, Vegan Serendib, a companion piece to her previous A Feast of Serendib, an Amazon bestseller. Friends of the show, writers V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan and Nayomi Munaweera are invited to the podcast to talk Sri-Lankan history, writers, and food in anticipation of Mary Anne’s newest cookbook.
If you want to find out more about Vegan Serendib, or support it, you can visit the Kickstarter Mary Anne is running at https://bit.ly/3vI4bTX.
Recorded 15 June 2021 / Published 21 June 2021
Contents
- 0:00: Mary Anne’s introducing topic and guests for the episode
- 1:27: Nayomi introduces herself
- 2:55: Sugi introduces herself
- 6:15: Contemporary Sri Lankan writers
- 12:00: On Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and his international success
- 15:05: Mary Anne on Sri Lanka and the civil war
- 20:10: Nayomi on writing for an international market
- 26:57: Intermission and SLF ad
- 27:35: Connecting to Vegan Serendib
- 34:17: On food writing and authenticity, and why milk rice wasn’t in A Feast of Serendib
- 38:47: On cooking Sri Lankan food for kids
- 42:08: To use, or not to use fresh coconut
- 46:46: On making idli and hoppers
- 49:47: Favorite Sri Lankan meals
- 1:02:30: Mary Anne on making fruit cake
- 1:05:30: On assimilation and bagels
- 1:08:54: On eating with your hands and the smell of curry
- 1:12:56: Where you can find Nayomi and Sugi on social media
Notes and Links
- Island Of A Thousand Mirrors, Nayomi Munaweera
- Love Marriage, V.V. Ganeshananthan
- Bodies in Motion, Mary Anne Mohanraj
- SJ Sindu, writer
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, writer
- Pireeni Sundaralingam, poet
- Hasanthika Sirisena, writer
- Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvadurai
- DesiLit, South Asian Arts Foundation
- Kriti Festival
- ArtWalla
- Sunil Yapa, writer
- Anuk Arudpragasam, writer
- A Passage North, by Arudpragasam
- Mark de Silva, writer
- Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, writer
- Amanda Jayatissa, writer
- Ameena Hussein, writer
- Ashok Ferrey, writer
- Shyam Selvadurai, writer
- My Sweet Girl, by Amanda Jayatissa
- Sri Lankan Civil War
- The Incomplete Thombu, by T. Shanaathanan
- Jaffna Public Library
- Jaffna Heritage Cooking, by N. Maheswari Devi
- Handmade, cookbook
- World’s biggest khiribath
- Galle Face Hotel
- Ayubowan, Sri Lankan food cart near Oakland, CA
- The Daly Bagel, Oakpark Bagel shop
- Nayomi Munaweera’s Facebook
- What We Hunger For, food essay anthology
- Sugi’s Twitter
- fiction/non/fiction, Sugi’s podcast
