Corn Chowder and Animal Man!

I've finally been doing some slightly innovative (i.e. not taco night, spaghetti, salad, or our weekly intake of Indian food) cooking. Corn chowder from the wonderful Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook and Southern Bowl: Chipotle Black-Eyed Peas with Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Collard Greens from Jae Steele's Get it Ripe. 

Mmm. Corn chowder with red potatoes. Is there anything better than red potatoes? With a little bit of celery to liven things up. All the recipes in Skinny Bitch are consistently excellent. I can't wait to try more. :)

I subbed kale for collard greens in the Southern Bowl. So good. I'm happy I finally picked up a copy of Get it Ripe. I borrowed this cookbook multiple times from the library, and found it at an amazingly low price at Half Price Books this weekend.

And now, on to..... (drum roll!)

Animal Man #1, 2, 3, and 4 by Jeff Lemire! I mentioned I picked up #1 and 2 at the Monroeville Phantom of the Attic last weekend. I liked those issues so much I swung by the Oakland PoA and got #3 and #4. #5 just came out last week, but sadly was sold out.

This is such a weird, amazing, fascinating book. Buddy Baker is Animal Man, a semi-retired superhero with a wife and two kids. His four-year daughter begins to show signs of having terrific powers of her own, starting off by re-animating all the dead pets in the neighborhood when her father tells her she can't have a dog. There is a creepily endearing scene where she's attempting to feed milk to a skeleton cat. 

Anyway. They journey off into a mystical zone called the Red, while Baker's wife and older son are fighting for their lives against a grotesque skin-stealing entity. Oh, and there's a talking cat that comes to Baker and his daughter's aid! Not the cat I mentioned earlier, this one comes from the Red and has all its furry parts.

As the cover of the first issue attests, some of the art in Animal Man is disturbing. This is actually the reason I put off buying an issue for so long. I kept staring at the covers at the comic book store and thinking to myself, Ewww. But it's a great story. Jeff Lemire's writing makes you care intensely about the fate of this family, and the implications of the Red and the Rot for the world at large. I can't wait to read #5.