Gingi Edmonds featured my wordplay and play on words, along with the recipe inside it — a fun take on Japanese/Hawaiian poke bowls.
Read on at Domestic Geek Girl for the full recipe.
I was featured not so long ago on Rudi’s Gluten Free Recipe Page with this fusion-food mash-up: The Thai Quesadilla.
As a quick and easy to assemble lunch or dinner–also delicious–this recipe has no equal. I recently made these thai-style quesadillas for friends, and everyone to the last and least gluten-free of the bunch devoured them and asked for more. It’s a cheap meal, satisfying, and although not peanut-free, it can be nearly everything-else-free.Fusion-food has gotten a leg-up recently, and this a perfect example of it at its best.
Continue on to Rudi’s Gluten Free page for the full recipe…
Whether cooking for kicks, or cooking because of a dietary necessity, you don’t need to cook crock. Cooking, Sharon Kane shows, can be both healing and enjoyable, creative and fulfilling.
An excerpt from my review of Kane’s The Sophisticated Peasant (available online via PDF) can be found below.
[You can also find a full copy of the review at Tumbling Gluten Free ]
We have had a funny divorce in our Western world. The divorce of food from nourishment. The divorce of food from community. We pit the concept of eating for pleasure against the concept of eating well, as if we ought to be able to drown our taste buds in yum, even if it abuses our bodies, or abuse our tastebuds with muck, just so as to “nourish” our bodies.But that is a false dichotomy. Food that nourishes should be food that pleases, and vice versa, and there is nothing inherently opposed in either concept.Peasant, and Sharon’s wonderfully integrative approach to eating and meal preparation, re-marry pleasure and nourishment.
I’ve just explored the challenges, and opportunities, of living with celiac disease. Do we have a cure? Maybe we do — look at it this way.
Check out the full article at Gluten Free and More Magazine online here.
Review of Eating Clean by Amie Valpone
gluten-free, grain-free, anti-inflammatory food with nourishing attitude
I’ve just reviewed health consultant and celiac disease advocate, Amie Valpone’s latest cookbook. I love when work coincides with service. I get to promote Amie’s holistic attitude to healing as well as write about some creative and nourishing recipes, and both serve the community of celiacs and those suffering autoimmune diseases!
Check out Eating Clean from The Healthy Apple, and cook it up this Spring!
4 Things I Learned: What Makes Good Writing, and Good Stories, From Bookish Bookers.
My bookish meanderings. Read along. Read along.
Working for someone whose mission and attitude you love: You can’t buy that kind of client. You can’t bill for that kind of client. You can’t plan that kind of client.
But to have that kind of client makes working a journey and a discovery, instead of a drag or a slog.
So how do you give yourself the gift of meaningful work? After all, you’re freelancing: YOU get to choose, right?
The truth is, sometimes yes and sometimes no.
When I began freelancing, my first client looked like a winner. This woman was a pearl with an artistic side-business and an elderly-care front business, and she talked shop like family. She just wanted to invite everybody in to the little shindig of her life, and pals was the catchword.
My job was a slightly unorthodox mix of promotion and some on-site care for the owner of the client’s apartment complex.
The bastard-blend of work could have been a warning. At this point in my career, I would call it a definite red flag. If my job is not clear as new paint, and carefully relegated to writing, branding, coaching, or social media support, I have come to expect blurry boundaries, arguments about rate, and increasing expectations as to my involvement and responsibility without increased pay.
It was no red-flag at the time. I was also a little starving on the work-frontier.
At the end of it, I got physically ill. But I also cut ties professionally and completely. What I didn’t cut was lingering awkwardness, and the fact that I was renting from said client’s client.
Awkward, yes. Uncomfortable, yes. Predictable? Avoidable? Probably not.
NOT MEANINGFUL WORK. NOT HEALTHY WORK.
The one thing I could have changed was my attitude of scarcity: that desperation that says take anything now you won’t make it you may not deserve better.
My next gig was better. It came about not through starving, but through a friendship and referral. All right, I was in dire straits. But I didn’t approach it as a kid in dire straits; I approached it like a manager interviewing a new employee. Did I fit with this company? Were they teachable? Did they want to work with me, not pal around?
Most importantly: Did I resonate with their mission and business practice?
Personally, I cannot do branding work for a client whose mission or voice clash with mine. It may be a universal rule of freelancing that good work is like a good marriage — compatibility and willingness to trust and communicate — but it is definitely a personal freelance rule for me.
Did I resonate? Yes. Was it a perfect fit? No, we talked it out. Was their mission meaningful and authentic? Yes.
Do I love exploring the content they promote, hawking their courses across social media, and teaching their staff how to navigate blogging? Absolutely yes.
I could not have planned this gig if I tried. What I could do, and did, was own my voice, own my boundaries, respect my value — and remain open to the next opportunity.
You may not be able to plan the work that feels like play, exploration, or relationship, but you can do these three things to get in its way:
1. Know what you do, do what you do, and take clients who want what you do.
2. CHOOSE. Don’t dive for a gig out of desperation or wont. There is no scarcity of work. Scarcity is fear in disguise, and it’s an attitude.
3. Continue to develop YOUR voice. Without self-development, you won’t know if you’ve connected with a client who resonates or not. You won’t have the chance to choose. You’ll lose your voice in the slog of someone’s brand.
So how do you find that sweet-spot of meaningful work? Look out for it, expect it, and no — you can’t plan it. But enjoy it when you get it — one good gig leads to another, as they say; and having a good time (or enjoying a good job) means giving a good time (and doing a good job).
Some of the best support I ever received in growing a business skips right along with THIS article (Why being weird works)
Be. YOU.
One hears the siren call of branding; the blast to put fangs into your FB posts; SEO and key words. Don’t deviate!
The truth of the matter is, there’s balance. Consistency is important.
But do you know what? Being odd gets you clients; and being you is what you’re hired for — your audacity, your authenticity, your quirks and talents. Communicate yourself well, with art and diligence and enthusiasm. But don’t dumb down your highs, or spike your lows. You don’t need to mainstream; you don’t need to slick.
Be an audacious son of a monkey.
Your words are important; and as important as your words is your voice. Anyone can write empower; educate; connect. Who do those words connect to though?
To put it visually: Anyone can type a branding concept or word. But what’s your font? And where do you fling that beauty, and with what heart or head or intent?
As the excellent freelancer does below, I shall quote Gervais: “People everywhere in the world will recognize and appreciate… innovation…. From my own experiences I’ve learned that quirky, different, fringe projects that may only be cult, often travel a lot better internationally. “
Travel yourself internationally. Communicate well. But don’t feel the compulsion to slick your metaphoric-hair down and stick to talking points.
If you’re an artist, a freelancer, a speaker, your audacity, your you is what gets you jobs.
It also gets you happy.
But who cares about that? Pardon my flippancy. Happiness also attracts clients. So love what you do, and be yourself about it.
Wonder is the key. And art based on the wonder of life is transformative.
Check out what I’ve learned from the artists I love, from G.K. Chesterton to Bob Dylan.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM THE ARTISTS I LOVE
Vital means living, and if you invest in social media as a freelancer, or as a specialist for a business or brand, you want your content and audience alive.
Here are 5 strategies to keep the social media conversation going. Apply to any platform, from Twitter to Facebook. But use them daily, and switch them up.
1) Share Followers Quandaries
Don’t just share your ideas or solutions! Share your followers’ questions and problems with your whole audience. Involve the community. People love helping — and sharing one person’s problem gives you both a huge pool of potential solutions to use yourself, and engages your audience. This adds up to shares, traffic, and brand identification.
2) Post Inspirational Quotes
Pick something meaningful. Share. Social media currency is sharing. But, as Claire Mitchell, founder of The Girls Mean Business, says,”… it helps people, because when you’re sitting there in your house running this business and trying to juggle it with kids or other jobs, it’s a really lonely place to be sometimes […] people feel as though they’re not alone.”
3) Ask Questions
Whether it’s about your latest product, a relevant current affair, or your followers’ taste in music, ask questions. If you have a food-based business, ask for favorite event-day recipes. If you’re in the clothing business, ask about strategies followers’ have used to get a tailored-look without visiting a tailor — or flattering designs-for-all figures.
Ask questions.
4) Run a Caption Contest
Humor + Engagement = Perfect way to get your page out there, shared, commented on!
5) Have a Blog
You need a landing page for deeper content. Start a blog. Refer all social media back to your website and blog when possible, and tap into relevant content using tools like Feedly.com.
Finally, care about your audience. This is social media. Anthropologists watching the behavior of users and communication styles say we relate to our social media groups like a tribe. We’re not selling. When you take on a social media state, you’re supporting.
C.J. Williams 