Saturday, May 17, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

It’s 82 degrees at 8:30 pm tonight. The sun is down and the sound of my neighbors’ numerous wall air conditioners taunts me through the open windows. Hummmmmmmmmmmm.

I don’t care. I’m not turning on the AC. This is my third summer in Los Angeles and I have so far refused to turn on the air conditioning in my apartment until August each year. I know it gets hot. It’s the desert. But as long as I keep the blinds drawn in the afternoon, the heat is bearable. In the evening, everything cools down and we make dinner and relax.

The weird thing is, I haven’t felt very hungry lately. When I ask myself, “What do I feel like for dinner?” I find I have no idea. I actually feel tired of foods. How about pizza? Nah. I don’t feel like pizza. Pasta? Soup? Sandwich? Mashed potatoes and gravy? Cheeseburger? Veggie wrap with garlic hummus? Tofu stir-fry? NOTHING?!?!

Nope. Nothing sounds that great. Not junk food, not healthy food, not comfort food.

This is weird. On both sides of my family, we are eaters of the first order. When they were growing up my dad and his siblings would trade you a toy for a pork chop. (They probably still would. Can anyone confirm this for me?)

In my mom’s family, we have a joke award called “The Hogmaster” for when people do stupid things for the love of food. Like when CK split open his chin crashing an ATV in the woods and refused to go to the hospital for stitches for more than 30 minutes because he was waiting for the BBQ ribs at the party to be served.

The story goes that he said, “But they make you wait so long in the emergency room, I’ll be STARVING by the time I get back here.” Well, we wouldn’t want that. Eating ribs was clearly the higher priority over receiving treatment for his gushing head wound. He went to the ER with BBQ sauce and his own blood all over his t-shirt. Congratulations, CK, you’ve won The Hogmaster!

I don’t think I can attribute loss of appetite to the weather alone, given my family history. The hot weather is part of it, but the other part is work.

Starting in December I began to network in earnest:

• I created a profile on LinkedIn and started getting in touch with all the publishing people I’ve worked with over the years, getting caught up with them and letting them know I’ve been freelancing.
• I became active on the message board of the Editorial Freelancers Association, answering questions related to my area of expertise, copyright and permissions editing.
• I created a basic website about my services and experience at http://www.permtrackers.com.
• I wrote about the role of the permissions editor in publishing for an industry blog and a professional newsletter.
• I submitted my resume whenever I found publishers seeking a freelance permissions editor on online job boards.

I wanted this spring and summer to be the best busy season ever. I wanted new clients in general and new projects from established clients. So far I seem to be getting what I wanted. This month I added three new clients to my roster. And this week an established client showed up with a new project.

As business heats up, I’m getting more joy and satisfaction out of my work. And continuing to network and market presents a suddenly appealing creative challenge, which is a relief after I feared and avoided it for so many years. These are all positive outcomes of increasing my professional profile, and I swear I do not mean to complain. But the down side is that stopping work to cook and eat has recently been an annoying interruption to the freelance reverie. And it’s a bit of a problem for me considering the high percentage of my happiness quotient I generally expect to get from food.

Choosing not to be daunted by a lack of appetite, I decided Thursday evening that I would open the fridge, grab a veggie, chop it, and sauté it in olive oil. Then, I would just stand back and listen.

I found a carton of white button mushrooms, chopped them and turned on the burner. After a few minutes stirring with a bamboo spatula, the mushrooms whispered up from my favorite stainless steel skillet, “Garlic. Rosemary. Fresh cracked pepper.”

OK, it was working. I started cooking without any idea of the end game, and the food led me on. On my way to the spice cabinet for dried rosemary, I found the sea salt and some thyme. So I threw those in, too.

What the heck should I do with these mushrooms? I only had two notions: omelet and pizza. I ran them by Eric. He said pizza.

Fine. I had our favorite middle eastern flatbreads in the freezer. And I had a few slices of provolone. But I had no sauce. Not my problem. Just keep going. Do not get in your own way. Keep cooking.

So, I placed two flatbreads on a baking sheet and thickly covered each with half the sautéed mushrooms. Yes, I used every last mushroom on two individual-sized pizzas. I know, I didn’t expect to do it either! But it nicely made up for there not being any sauce. Next I rummaged through the freezer and found some whole frozen spinach leaves. On they went, still frozen. Then I cut two slices of provolone into tiny triangles and arranged them evenly across the toppings.

I know that cranking the oven up to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit) is a wretched, wretched thing to do on a hot evening, but I’ve decided just to get over it or else we’ll end up eating instant noodles all the time. Good food (and good living, I think) is not always about being comfortable. Sometimes happiness comes from pushing yourself a little further as long as you’re able. And being neither elderly nor infirm, Eric and I lived through a hot night without air conditioning in Los Angeles and we even dared to heat up the oven.

And I’m likely to do it again. Appetite or no.

Posted in copyright & permissions, los angeles, balance, publishing, making do, cooking, attitudes, LinkedIn, freelance, editing, change your mind, enthusiasms | 2 Comments »

Saturday, April 26, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

Well, yesterday was our first full day with water! Hallelujah!

There are still holes in the ceiling with sawdust and wood chips everywhere. But I refuse to complain about that. The water is on!

And because it’s Saturday and there is currently no plumbing emergency, there are no plumbers on-site today and we are experiencing the blessed quiet. What relief!

My schedule is not very compatible with plumbers. I usually wake up at about 10 a.m. to start my freelance workday. (Don’t hate me — I don’t have kids yet, I know this won’t last.) For two weeks now I’ve been forcing myself to stay asleep in spite of all the racket that usually begins at 7 a.m.

Thursday morning was a bit more than I could take with a smile and an even temper, though. I was rousted from my bed just before 8 a.m. so that plumbers could saw holes in my bedroom ceiling and route pipes through. It would not have been so horrible if we had been warned ahead of time. But no one ever mentioned they’d need access to our bedroom, let alone at a time of day when I’m very actively using it.

I finally got to sleep in today. It gives me the feeling of life getting back on track, at least a little.

On the bright side, we were cheered by our neighbors across the courtyard this week. Mr. & Mrs. B brought us lunch one day: spinach pie with corn and potato kugel. Bless them twice! All I had to do was heat it in the oven in the aluminum foil it came in. I’ve been pushing hard to keep up with all of my freelance work in spite of the loud distractions and their special lunch delivery was a miracle to me.

The B’s are retired and since Eric and I work from home, we often get the chance to chat with them about what’s going on. And sometimes Mrs. B will drop by with some kitchen talk.

It’s nice to have good neighbors like this and it is one of the things I was looking for when we moved to Los Angeles — a neighborhood with people who interact with one another.

My grandparents had this type of neighborhood, and I practically grew up at their house. And ever since I finished college and moved out into the world, I have wanted to live in a place with good neighbors.

The B’s celebrated Passover last week and they attended a dinner at Mrs. B’s sister’s house. Mrs. B volunteered to bring the Potato Kugel. But she was missing one important thing: she does not have a food processor or other electric grinder to pulverize the potatoes.

Since I’m the only other cook, she was not surprised to find that out of 11 other apartments in the complex, I’m the only person with the appliance she needed.

So, she scheduled me — a month in advance! — to come over with my Kitchenaid stand mixer with food grinding attachments to grind all her potatoes and onions for the kugel. That was on Friday, April 18. It was a delight to help out and it was even better to get to sample the results. Simply delicious — and I will make it myself soon.

I was fortunate to get a copy of the recipe:

Mrs. B’s Potato Kugel

10 large baking potatoes
2 onions
6 eggs
2/3 cup matzo meal
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Peel and slice the potatoes to fit into your food grinder chute (or, if you’re lucky, a 14-cup food processor — it’s faster). Process potatoes until ground. If they’re very watery, drain out the water using a strainer.

2. Peel and slice the onion into wedges to fit into your food grinder chute (or food processor). Process onions until ground.

3. Beat eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add all remaining ingredients, including potatoes and onions and mix well.

4. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (Fahrenheit).

5. Liberally grease a 9″ x 13″ casserole or pan with vegetable oil and preheat the empty pan in the oven.

6. Once the pan is hot, spoon the potato kugel mixture into the hot pan. Bake a 400 degrees (Fahrenheit) for one hour until firm.

Posted in los angeles, balance, making do, recipes, cooking, attitudes, pie, sleep, love, freelance, miracle foods | 4 Comments »

Tuesday, April 22, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

In the midst of the plumbing craziness, I’ve received an equal and opposite jolt! Today Lori Cates Hand, who blogs at Publishing Careers, has directed her readers to Learning To Eat — and with glowing praise. Thank you, Lori!

In her post, Lori mentions that Learning To Eat is mostly a food blog, and I would agree. But food comes in many forms. Finding your True Work and doing it with all your might brings a very wholesome sense of joy, just like preparing and eating a homecooked meal. It fills you up and makes you hungry for more.

Working from home integrates my work life and home life into one giant 24/7 occupation 365 days a year. And at times it will look on the page to be about two parts food to one part publishing. As we dig into the busy season in the coming months, the balance will shift towards publishing shop talk. And then back again towards food toward the end of the year.

This is the annual cycle of my life as a freelancer. And the cycle of learning to find work, do work, get paid for the work, pay the bills, buy the groceries, keep myself motivated and working and growing forward — this is what I mean by Learning To Eat. I’m only just starting and the scope will unfold as I blog along.

I thank you all for reading and for your comments. And I especially thank Lori as one of my earliest inspirations and supporters for sharing my freelance life through this blog.

Posted in balance, blogs & blogging, publishing, attitudes, editing, love, energy, freelance, celebration | 4 Comments »

Monday, April 21, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

Last week was brutal.

Starting last Monday, April 14, the very old plumbing in our apartment building decided to give up. My next-door neighbor got the worst of it, including a flooded kitchen and living room, ruined carpeting, and a jackhammer busting through the concrete slab underneath the carpet so the plumbers could repair the main water line. This is still going on, so we will not have water fully restored until the end of this week. If more complications arise, it may be longer.

Eric and I have been making do as best we can, with some interesting results. For the first few days, we were disappointed and a bit cranky, but we’ve now gotten into a rhythm and having limited access to water is not so horrible. Our neighboring building across the courtyard still has water, so we’ve been using my giant stockpot to draw water from their laundry room sink. That allows us to flush and wash enough to get by.

It occurred to me yesterday how much water we must be saving. I was able to “shower” (standing in the tub and using the help of a big plastic cup) with about one half of the filled stockpot. I’m sure I use a lot more than that taking a traditional shower, and now it seems like showering the regular way is a lot more of a luxury than I realized.

While the water issue is an inconvenience, the noise of plumbers at work is much more disruptive. They’re cutting through the building walls, sawing pipes into proper lengths, and don’t forget the jackhammering through concrete. Most of the noisy work is done while the other tenants are at their jobs for the day, but our peace is doubly wrecked by this plumbing breakdown because we work from home. To make a business call without deafening, pounding interruptions, we have to take a long walk or get in the car.

Anyway, in the midst of this, I somehow managed to cook one decent dinner. On Saturday I made a homemade chicken pie. I did take photos and I have a little story about it and making do, but I’ll have to reserve it for when my nerves are a little less jangled.

In the meantime, please take a look at Cooking to Ground: Daily Acts as Sacred. It’s an article I recently wrote for AmericanMetaphysics.org, which was posted to the site on Sunday, April 20.

Posted in balance, making do, los angeles, cooking, dealings w/feelings, energy | 5 Comments »

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I’ve been a freelance permissions editor for eight years now, except for four months last year when I worked full-time as a permissions editor for SAGE Publications, Inc. When I decided to return to freelancing, one of several factors affecting that decision was food.

With the long commute and the rigid schedule required by office work, I could not seem to get any cooking done. It was a high-stress position, and I used each weekend to recuperate from the past week and get ready for the next.

Somehow I could not scrounge up any creative energy or joy to plan new meals, restock the pantry, and cook to fill the freezer. I hoped that over time it would get easier, but months passed and it didn’t. Eric and I ate through our stockpile of frozen, pre-made and portioned foods and then turned to take-out in desperation.

I live in Los Angeles, and everyone here seems to eat out as the solution to finding food on a busy schedule. But I have trouble feeling satisfied with take-out. When it becomes a habit, it tends to make me feel dull and listless. I can never answer the question, “What do you want to eat?” when handed a fistful of take-out menus.

I guess I get confounded by take-out because what I want is usually found in a home kitchen. I want variety and convenience. I want high-quality, inexpensive, home-cooked food. I want to eat an incredible soup and sandwich combo ten minutes from now for under $1. I want an organic omelet with eggs laid by happy, vegetarian chickens living la vida free-range.

Again: variety, convenience, high-quality, inexpensive. I want all of it together, and it’s not really out there. It’s in here, in my own kitchen.

Perhaps most people don’t find cooking at home to be convenient. You’ve got to have the right ingredients on hand and they need time and attention, and then don’t forget all those dirty dishes at the end.

Sure, that’s true. But I have a basic pantry of dry goods. I keep a small array of veggies on hand (onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, cabbage), and since I’m cooking every day it’s easy to eat things before they expire. I keep some meat in the freezer. And I strategically selected this apartment because it’s walking distance to three major grocery stores: Trader Joe’s, Ralphs, and Gelson’s. There is also a small produce market nearby. If I really want something else, I just need to put on my walking shoes.

The time and attention that go into cooking are an important draw to get me away from this computer screen, which I would otherwise gaze into all hours of the day. And the dish washing doesn’t bother me. I do most of it in the morning while I clear the sleep from my mind, plan my important to-dos for the day, and get that breakfast oatmeal on the burner.

I don’t have a rigid cooking plan because I don’t respond well to rigid anything. I would only cause a mess by planning a week full of square meals because I would start with good intentions Sunday and by Tuesday be angry that I was stuck with all these square meals. It doesn’t matter that I chose them myself before shopping carefully on Sunday — by Tuesday I would feel penned in, not liberated. Sometimes you have to anticipate your failings and plan to succeed around them.

My cooking plan instead involves loose cooking practices. I started with a small one, the oatmeal habit (see my first post, Donut Consequences, for the origin story). That is my breakfast default. If we have a box of celebratory donuts on the counter, then I can choose to go ahead and eat one. Or, if it’s the weekend, I may splurge and make a special cowboy breakfast of fried eggs, hash browns, beans, toast and coffee. But if I wake up and have no clue what I want for breakfast, I put on the oatmeal. It keeps my brain from starving on days where I need to stay focused on work (all of them, really).

Next, I rely heavily on soups. I make a giant vat of some new soup each week, store four or six portions (where a portion equals one meal for two adults in my household) in the freezer for later use, and then serve the remainder of the soup with different accompaniments for lunch all week. Some soups are vegan, some are vegetarian, some have meat or meat stock.

There are a few favorites that I keep on hand almost always. I have a standard all-vegetable soup based on cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and kale in a tomato broth. It’s vegan, incidentally, and homey and delicious. I’ve fiddled with the recipe, but it started as Southern Vegetable Soup from Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups.

I made it yesterday, in fact. It goes with toasted cheese one day, then fresh hot cornbread the next, then whole-wheat crackers, then a fried egg on toast. On day five, Eric and I discuss: “Should we go back to toasted cheese or make more cornbread? We haven’t made bean and cheese quesadillas yet . . . ooooh, that’s it!” It stays interesting this way. And honestly, I love that soup so much that I could eat it alone every day for a very long time without tiring of it. It is homemade and it is mine.

I love to keep a pureed pinto bean soup that also doubles as an excellent dip when boiled down with shredded cheddar melted into it. I made this one last week. It starts out vegan (before you add dairy to garnish it) and is fantastic paired 50/50 in a soup bowl with cooked brown rice. Garnish with salsa, scallions, cilantro, a squeeze of lime, sour cream, yogurt, cheddar, whatever you have.

Again, I was inspired by a cookbook and then altered the outcome according to what I had on hand. See page 53 of Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen for the original Pinto Bean Soup. I tend to add carrots, celery and green peppers where the recipe suggests only onions, garlic and chiles. I like adding more veggies to this one especially because they add complexity to the flavor when I use the soup as a dip, which I do often. It also converts quickly to refried beans (remember cowboy breakfast?) or a filling for quesadillas and tacos.

As I prepare for a busy spring and summer I will stay diligent, cooking and freezing portions of a new soup each week. I want to cook far enough ahead so that when I am hungry I can heat up something great without needing any more brain cells than boiling requires. As I mentioned before, by the time I’m hungry my IQ has dropped considerably. And I need to eat, get smart, and get back to work!

In a way, the freezer becomes a kind of freelancer security as the schedule fills up. It keeps me eating well when I’m under deadline pressure. And hitting those deadlines keeps the grocery money flowing in. When the system is working, it’s all one complete circle. And when it’s not — like last summer — I feel lost. I seem happiest when my life, work, and universe revolve around one small apartment kitchen and the tiny, cluttered desk parked near it.

Food and work are the center of my life. They feed each other. And they feed me.

Posted in cooking, editing, soup, los angeles, balance, copyright & permissions, freelance, energy, enthusiasms, brain food, beans, books, love, oatmeal habit | 4 Comments »

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

Yesterday I spent nine hours editing Eric’s résumé.

Editing other people’s résumés is a special sort of hell. Because it takes a unique type of energy from me, a nurturing all-seeing eye combining the forces of empathy and sharp arrows. I interview and dig and coach and prod. I intuit, I guess, I try, and sometimes undo. I review and rewrite and reformat, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Perhaps everyone’s résumé needs this kind of deep attention, but many cannot afford to pay what would be a fair price for the effort. And it’s a misery to be underpaid for grueling work. So I only do it for love, never money.

I spent a bit more time tweaking it this afternoon, and I’m at the point where I know it’s not Perfect but it is definitely Very Good. I think I can let it go out into the world.

But there’s always that bit of worry. If it’s not ready, not good enough, then tens of thousands of dollars could be riding on it, opportunities lost because of my choices and advice. Or maybe not. I possibly take it too hard. But I’ve got to treat all the details seriously, rabidly, just in case.

I like to be kept up to date when they go out: Did you get the job? Which one? Did they mention liking the resume? Congratulations! (*breathing out* Thank God it worked — they liked my baby!)

Argh. So you see why I can’t offer this type of skill as part of my for-profit business. It’s too much of an emotional roller coaster. And while being in business by yourself, for yourself (sole proprietor) naturally feels a bit personal at times, I try to keep my work emotions as steady as possible.

Still, it’s difficult to stay in balance all the time when offering services. Interesting opportunities arise and I have to accurately evaluate: Do I want that experience? And also, am I up to the challenge at this moment?

Timing is everything because the gauge on my creative reserves is fluctuating daily. All sorts of variables change how much of me is available for tackling new projects: Am I sleep-deprived? Did I just come off a doozy of an assignment that drained my brain completely? Do I have important appointments or errands this week or can I hunker down in my apartment and commit to working so deeply that I experience time loss?

If something sparkly and new has popped up in front of me, out of optimism I can commit to a project that I don’t have the energy reserves to complete with feelings of power and joy.

No one else knows when this happens to me because for some reason it does not show on the outside. Sometimes my husband cannot tell. I will seem perfectly fine and happy, my work output and performance will be top-notch as always. But I will no longer be having fun. I will not feel satisfied with my work, no matter how good it is. All I will feel is that I can’t wait for the project to be finished so I can run away and recharge before someone notices I am cracking up.

And of course, I know that not all work can be done while I ecstatically resonate energy with feelings of power and joy. But isn’t that a neat goal to shoot for? Isn’t the possibility of striving for happiness and satisfaction one of the big reasons that I face the many challenges of freelancing for a living?

When I catch myself feeling like everything is dire and I’m at the end of the rope holding the last knot with sweaty palms, I use a trick I call “Change Your Mind.”

To change my mind, I think of all the things that are wrong and list them (in my head or on paper). Recently the list looked like this:

• This short film shoot was supposed to be 5 days and we’re on day 14 now, with no set end date.
• The honorary token flat fee for this indie project currently amounts to just over $1 per hour and with each day gets lower still.
• I have to put off or turn away editing gigs until this film is completed and it irks me to be losing so much opportunity for making money.
• I’m worried that my editing clients will notice I’m gone and get gone themselves.
• No one is taking the time to explain to me what they need and why, so I can solve the problem quickly.
• This project is understaffed so we’ve all been sloppy at organizing the equipment which makes it impossible to find what I need.
• I’m afraid my work performance on this shoot is suffering because conditions are even tougher than usual.
• I’m hungry.
• I’m tired.
• I have cramps.

Then I take a deep breath and ask myself: “When you started this project, did you say yes for love or money?”

In this case, the answer was love.

My next question: “If you take your money worries out of the equation, can you still persevere and do a good job — for love — here?”

And the answer was yes.

My attitude changed in that moment. I felt better and realized I could make it through the hard circumstances because my original objective was still being met. I wanted to do the film for the experience, because it needed me, for love. My basic problem was really that my exhaustion caused me to feel horrible and it messed up my viewpoint. To be happy again I had to “change my mind” by reviewing my original motivations and realizing that I was achieving what I started out to.

Today I finished a resume for love. And after writing this, I finally feel satisfied with it because — even though it took much more time and effort than I had expected — I succeeded in what I set out to do.

Working for money is another story for another day . . .

Posted in dealings w/feelings, change your mind, attitudes, balance, editing, freelance, sleep, love, energy, film | 3 Comments »

Saturday, March 22, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

A good rest for me is nine or ten hours and includes dreams I can remember when I wake up. Freelancing allows me to get this much sleep every few days. Call it my bonus for not having a long commute, or a trade-off for a lack of paid vacation.

I think of my dreams as belonging to groups or categories. For example, one group would be “recurring themes.”

I call another group “pacing” or “speed” dreams — these feature a lot of stuff that happens so quickly that I can’t get a grip on any narrative or story. I usually interpret speed dreams as messages that I’m afraid my life is going too fast (or too slow) and that I need to slow down (or speed up) to feel better.

I have “everyday” dreams where what I am doing and saying is very much like my real life. I have a conversation with my husband or I go get the mail. They reaffirm feelings of satisfaction, that the status quo is pretty good (for now).

Then there are the “metaphors,” which can be whole stories or short bursts of loaded images that I need to dissect when I wake up thinking, “Why on earth would I dream about THAT?” A big proportion of my dreams lately have been metaphors.

This week I dreamed of pies. Two specifically: pumpkin and an Amish-style oatmeal (like pecan pie but with oatmeal instead).

Why pies?

Pumpkin pie is by far my favorite pie. It means safety and comfort to me. And while I have not yet made or even tasted an Amish-style oatmeal pie, I have been reading and thinking about it for a long while, maybe years. I could taste it very clearly in the dream.

I have thought of baking both these pies more than once in recent months. It started back in September. I hosted a Pampered Chef cooking show when my dear friend Christina became a consultant. Because I wanted to try one of Pampered Chef’s well-reviewed stoneware baking dishes and because I have always loved pie, I bought the beautiful Deep Dish Pie Plate in Cranberry.

I LOVE this pie dish. It heats and bakes very evenly — better than any glass or metal pan I own. I have used it many times — for apple crisp, brownies, even a lovely lemon cake. I get better results than I expect with each new trial. But for some reason I have not gotten around to baking a pie in the pie dish.

No pie. This is strange because I am a pie enthusiast. I have a pie background. When I was 17, I spent an entire day picking sour cherries from my grandmother’s two trees, half a day pitting and preparing them, and the following two days baking cherry pies from scratch. I made 19. It was July in Ohio (humid), my mother’s house had no air conditioning, and the oil-based dough that made my favorite crust back then practically melted into each pan. It must have been 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) in the kitchen. The pies were lattice-topped and I crimped the edges pretty, too. No shirking.

Why have I not made pie?

I have meant to, and I certainly have the ingredients for both a pumpkin and an oatmeal pie. In the fall of 2006 I went to Costco and did a serious stock-up on canned pumpkin. And thanks to the oatmeal habit and my love of apple crisp, I keep both steel-cut and olde-fashioned oatmeal on hand as pantry staples.

I have lots of recipes to choose from because I seriously love cookbooks. I flip through them at night to help me relax. In preparation for testing the new pie pan, last fall I bought and read Pie by Ken Haedrich, which I adore for its depth and variety and think of as “The Pie Bible.”

I’ve recently been cooking from the earthy and homespun From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens by Phyllis Pellman Good and Rachel Thomas Pellman, and they have a perfect, simple oatmeal pie on page 220.

There appears to be no other reason for not baking pie besides irrational pie block. I think that I have both a literal and figurative need for pie. I am putting off pie for later when today and every day is a great day for pie.

This is definitely a metaphor dream. I think my pie block may have something to do with a wrong idea. And that wrong idea whispers in my ear: “You don’t have time.” Or: “You should be working.” Maybe even: “You don’t deserve it yet.”

But would baking a pie keep me from doing good work? No, I know it wouldn’t. Would joy contribute energy to the work in front of me, this week and month and year? Oh, yes.

This is why I need that sleep to pay attention to my dreams. Because without them I can mess up for a very long time — by not baking pie or by missing some other vital aspect of life. I never forget work and deadlines and clients and bills. But I do forget to nurture myself, sometimes for months.

I’ve got some correcting to do this weekend. I’ve got to go bake a pie.

Posted in pampered chef, balance, sleep, books, pie, dreams & dreaming, oatmeal habit | 4 Comments »

Thursday, March 20, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I think I might as well just start where I am. I ate a donut for breakfast today.

This is very un-normal for me. Normal is a long-cooked bowl of steel-cut oats with soy milk and a shot of ground flax seed. Which sounds as appealing as gnawing on branches if it is not what you are accustomed to. But I am. I love it. I crave it, usually.

I didn’t start out that way of course. The oatmeal habit started back in 2000. It was a result of two unlikely forces colliding in my life. First: my dad and step-mom started yet another diet-slash-new-eating-plan-for-life (not uncommon). Second: I was returning to my blissful home office after two treacherous weeks shooting a short film in the desolation that is Cisco, Utah.

Note: No one eats properly on an indie film shoot, even if everyone is trying to. You eat what you can get your hands on when you can get it. Your focus is on trying to continue working without falling over dead. I have never seen so much beef jerky consumed per capita (and by professed vegetarians) in all my life. May the angels save us.

So, strung out from the road, I returned home and phoned all my parents (who live in another state) to report on my safe flight. What news have you, good parents? I ask.

The Word is oatmeal. Oatmeal, my dad reports, will save us from our ills. My dad is not a religious man, per se, but he is delightfully prone to enthusiasms. I get this from him. Enthusiasms come on like fevers. They overwhelm your sense of sight, taste, and smell. You touch nothing, hear nothing else.

I do not generally like food fads or believe in miracle foods. But what I needed at that moment — after all the film food — was a high-fiber enthusiasm. So I took his advice and ate it, every day.

Right away, my life improved.

I’m a driven freelance editor. And in the first few years I worked at home I had trouble remembering to eat. I would wake up every morning, turn on the computer and get crackin’. Until I noticed a few hours in that I had become stupid. And then it was too late to decide what to eat — can’t think, brain broken.

Many, many hours of productive work were lost because I was not smart enough to keep my blood-sugar up. And once you get a decent meal in you, you never fully recover your brain-power that day. You’ve got to start over again tomorrow and . . . it’s pretty darn hard to break the cycle once you’ve started.

The oatmeal mandate solved this. Before turning on the computer each day, I would put on the long-cooking steel-cut oats. By the time they were done, I had realized I was hungry because I could smell their steamy oatmeal invitation wafting into my office from the kitchen. A perfect system.

So then why break a perfect system by eating a donut today?

Because they were on sale. Because they were the lovely olde-fashioned kind that Eric and I love best. Because it is my birthday month. Because I’ve been very good. Because my happiness requires some variety. Because we worked on a film shoot last month and I did not get nearly enough donuts. Because I’m still learning to eat.

All of that is true.

Some days joy is worth a little lost productivity. That is my best reason to start this blog.

Posted in enthusiasms, celebration, balance, miracle foods, brain food, film, oatmeal habit, junk food | 6 Comments »