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 »

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I finally made that pie I dreamed of. And it was better in real life.

It’s the pan. I know it’s the pan. I’ve baked dozens and dozens of pies and this is the first time I have ever inspected the crust and the word “perfect” left my lips in a whisper. It was evenly golden brown from the crusty fluted edge to the center of the bottom.

No dark spots, and no vaguely overbaked too-dark aftertaste. Also, no soggy part there in the middle because you took it out early worried that the edge would char.

And I did not shield it while it was in the oven — neither with one of those aluminum shields nor with foil. I didn’t need to because the stoneware pan baked the most fantastically even crust. I’m not going back. Not ever.

The photo above is of the first pumpkin pie in the Pampered Chef Stoneware Deep Dish Pie Plate in Cranberry. I made a second one this past Sunday when I had out-of-town guests stop over for dinner. It was as perfect as the first. Yes, I know that may be difficult to believe, but you’ll either have to trust me or get a hold of one of these pans and test it yourself. (If you need a PC consultant, I can refer you to mine. Just drop me a line.)

There has got to be a lot more pie now. Not only because I loved the fantastic results from the first two pumpkin pies. But also because baking pies this past week reminded me how easy it is to make something that improves my life by leaps and bounds.

I know there are people who fear pie baking because the crust makes them nervous. I think pie baking has a lot to do with confidence. And if you’re not confident from the start when you’ve made your first few pies, you need to keep baking more pies until you earn that confidence. It will come. And in the end you too will get fantastic results.

I’m fortunate to have learned pie baking at the elbow of two fine ladies – my maternal grandmother and my step-mother – and neither of them had any pie fear. Both made the crust by hand by cutting vegetable shortening into flour with a pastry blender or with a fork. Both got delicious results.

I’ve done it that way and I’m nostalgic about the method because it’s what I first learned. But, in my adulthood, I’ve been fortunate to receive a KitchenAid stand mixer as a gift and I recently have used it to blend the fat into the flour. It is very fast and thorough, which is especially good when you’ve got more on your to-do list today than “bake pie.”

My current pie pastry recipe contains all butter (plus flour, salt and water) and comes from Rosie’s Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg (see the recipe on page 175 for Basic Pie Crust 1). I have also enjoyed using a crust based on vegetable oil, which I learned in my home economics class in the seventh grade. I think that there are lots of good crusts out there and I don’t think any are inherently better than others since taste and preferences are very personal.

But I tend to go back to the all-butter crust time and again because (1) it’s butter, and butter tastes better to me and (2) I have such excellent results rolling out this crust. I place the refrigerated disk of dough on waxed paper or plastic wrap, and I roll it out with my rolling pin using no additional flour. As long as it stays reasonably cold, it does not stick to the pin. If you need to work very slowly, just slide it gently back into the fridge when it starts to stick. Slide your hand under the waxed paper or plastic wrap and the gently turn it dough-side-down into the pie plate. Then gently peel away the paper or plastic and guide the dough to fill all corners of the plate. Fancy up the crust with your favorite design — I prefer crimping by hand.

For the pumpkin filling, I did a search through my recent favorite cookbooks. I did not want to trudge up to the store just to buy the evaporated milk that is an ingredient in many pumpkin pie recipes. Instead, I found a lovely alternative in From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens by Phyllis Pellman Good and Rachel Thomas Pellman.

Their recipe on page 212 contains the usual ingredients with the addition of one tablespoon flour (as a thickener, I think), one tablespoon molasses or King Syrup and one tablespoon of browned butter. Where they called for one half cup each of milk and cream, I substituted one cup of whole milk. I spiced it with ground ginger and cinnamon and left out the nutmeg because I’m running low and needed it for my secret ingredient in mashed potatoes.

This is a fantastic pumpkin custard — so delicious, soft and smooth. Once again, I’m not going back to the old way with the canned milk. I like this better. It is simpler because I often have milk in the fridge but have to buy evaporated milk just for pumpkin pie. What for? No reason, it turns out. It seems like lots of interesting things happen when I make do instead of buying ingredients just because they’re listed in a recipe.

I had been putting off pie baking for months, as I mentioned in my post about Pie Dreams, and as I slid the first pumpkin pie into the oven, I thought, shame on me! This was not some sort of difficult project to dread and delay. It was easy and fun. But I let myself get too busy and forget.

It’s amazing how finally doing something you’ve had on your mind opens the world up to you. I need to start baking pie all the time; weekly, at least, because I need to solidify my relationship with it. So I’m adding that to the cooking plan. My last pie was this past Sunday, so I need to get another one in by the end of the weekend. I’m going to go for the other dream pie: Amish-style oatmeal pie. Then we’ll see where the wind takes me.

Posted in change your mind, energy, attitudes, nostalgia, cooking, love, pampered chef, celebration, pie, dreams & dreaming, books, enthusiasms | 7 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 »