Saturday's the day!

Don't miss out - this year's Free Comic Day is Saturday, July 3. On this glorious day, participating comic shops will hand you a free comic, just because you're so pretty! (Or because you walked in the door. One of the two). I know my favorite store is participating, and there's a locator to check for one near you. My only word of caution is that this is not dissimilar to crack dealers giving away one free hit - one minute you're feeling all mellow (Does crack make you mellow? Or is it more like speed? I'm too lame to know things like this) and the next you're addicted and spend the rest of your life waiting for the next Wednesday (for those not in the know, Wednesday is New Comic Day). Unfortunately, I'm going to be away on Saturday, so you all need to enjoy without me.

Good eats

So I've been in Gainesville, Florida, visiting the folks and avoiding the bugs and being thankful that I no longer live in a state where the humidity is always set on "instant mildew". I took a few days out to visit St. Augustine Beach, where I picked up "Food Favorites of St. Augustine" by Joan Adams Wickham (Historic Print & Map Company, 1973). It's a nice spiral-bound recipe collection of the sort published by women's societies and community groups everywhere, but it includes quite a lot of local history and context and many old-fashioned woodcut-type illustrations. And, of course, it has lots of very Floridian recipes, some of which are more appealing than others.

If I ever get the urge for Frog Salad, I now have a recipe:

Clean and skin the frogs and soak in salted water for about an hour. If large frogs can be had, the greater part of the body can be used, but of small frogs, the legs only are worth bothering with. Boil slowly until quite tender: drain off the water, cover with milk and let this come to a boil being careful that the milk does not burn. Drain again and cool, separate the meat from the bones and salt a little if too fresh. [...]

This would be the perfect snack to eat while watching the Muppet Movie, maybe with a side of pork rinds.

There's a recipe for Coquina broth. I've been digging little purple and orange coquina shells out of the wet sand with my toes since I was a baby, but this is the first I've ever heard of people eating them. (The coquinas, not my toes.)

It also never occurred to me to eat a gopher tortoise, which is a good thing, because they're protected by law in Florida. But if I ever catch another one, now I can cook Minorcan gopher stew:

Wash gopher well. Remove head, shell and entrails. Scald in boiling water until the skin and claws become loose enough to remove. Cut meat into small pieces, and simmer until tender in well salted water with one whole Datil pepper. [...]

This seems a violent way to treat so contemplative an animal.

The recipe for the Yucca Petal Omelet claims that yucca flowers "evoke the flavor of fresh asparagus." I've read the same thing about sauteed young cicadas; people, isn't it easier to just eat the damn asparagus?

The book claims to contain about 400 recipes; some of the others are Avocado Ice Cream, Kumquat Jelly, Alligator Stew ("First catch a medium-size alligator..."), Palmetto Cake (does not actually contain palmetto), Jefferson Davis Pie (does not actually contain Jefferson Davis), Baked Sherried Grapefruit, Kumquat Chips, Orange-Brandy Fritters (mmmmm), Sweet Potato Pone, Sweet Potato Pudding with Hard Sauce (mmmm again), and Shrimp Wiggle. The Shrimp Wiggle recipe doesn't look all that appetizing (diced shrimp, tomato soup, onions), but I approve on principle of foods with "wiggle" in the name.

What I'd really like the recipe for is the wonderful grouper with cucumber sauce I had at one St. Augustine restaurant. I suppose I could take my souvlaki sauce recipe and thin it out with milk or cream.

Which reminds me, there's a blog out there named Tasty Manatees. ("Big. Slow. Nutritious.") It's a right-wing political blog, and so not of much interest to me, but I love the title and the tagline. I have been told by manatee researchers that they are, indeed, sweet and tasty. The manatees, not the researchers.

Comic book love and snobbery

Like I reported before, I've been sucked into reading comics. I've mostly become interested in Barbara Gordon/Batgirl/Oracle and her story. And I've been catching up with Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing, her sometime boyfriend and all around cute-but-fucked-up guy. I've bought a kinda scary number of trade paperbacks in the last few weeks and am reading them in semi-random order, as they come in from Amazon and eBay and other providers. Right now I am deep into the No Man's Land mega-arc set of books and these kind of post-disaster/apocalypse stories always push my buttons so I am loving my reading. I have found some helpful resources in trying to understand the storylines that intersect through multiple titles (having caught on so late, I'm trying to understand all the major storylines in the post-Crisis era). My finds include the BatSquad pages, the Unoffical DC Comics Index, and the Continuity Pages, which has a terrible design, but some good time tables. Batverse Resource collects character and series information as well, in a lovely and useful format. I've been sticking to trade paperbacks mostly, but I feel like those are the gateway drugs, and any day now I'll have a pull file at the local comics store (whose owner knows Christina's name, so at least I'd be in good company).

Unfortunately, my love for the Batverse apparently renders me uncool or something like it with certain of my acquaintances and friends. And okay, I would totally get it if they wanted to mock me for reading comic books (like if they were reading Tolstoy or some such), but mostly it's a snobbery about which comics I'm reading (no Marvel, all superhero makes me pedestrian I guess) and that's just insane-making. I hadn't realized the comics world had become another outlet for the Mac vs. Windows type of folks (I should have realized that; I certainly know and love enough of those people.) All I can say is, I'm in the first blush of fannish love here and need my fellow comic-book-reading people to stop raining on my parade.