I think you're sauceome.

We had a lovely lunch today at M. Henrietta on Granville, and after lunch, two of the three people I was with pulled out phones to track their calories. For a brief moment I was flush with … I don’t know, exactly. Guilt? Defensiveness? Like I was preemptively bracing for judgment or criticism or something. Which of course, I wasn’t, but old habits die hard, I guess – even after all this time.

I wondered if what I ate was healthy enough, should I have ordered the brown rice, chicken and vegetables bowl without cheese? I wondered if I was doing enough, why wasn’t I also tracking my calories? Fortunately it only took me a moment to realize that DUH, I write my food down all the time, and DUH, my brown rice and black bean bowl was hearty and healthy and delicious, and DUH, I bike 15 miles a day and also work out and I’m doing plenty. I was surprised at how easily I fell into my old patterns of shame, but I was also encouraged at how quickly I snapped out of it. Small victories?

Announcements! So’s you know, you can buy my newest minicomic, Shuteye #6: The Fetch here! I’m selling it in print and digital versions. Shuteye is a series of short story comics I do about dreams and the nature of dreaming. The stories are loosely connected, but they all stand alone, so you don’t have to have read one to know what’s going on in another, but if you’re interested, I’ve got the entirety of the first issue online here, you can read it for free!

Guys, I am pretty sure that researching and drawing the panel with the house centipede was probably the grossest, nastiest thing I have ever done for comics. I hate those things so much. So much so much so much so much.

I’m not a big fan of hot dogs; the uniformity of the texture bothers me. I haven’t had one in ages. Niles doesn’t like hot dogs either, he was just trying to tease me. I know this is kind of an old and possibly unfair joke, (it goes back to the 1800s!) the idea that hot dogs are made out of … whatever. There are plenty of brands out there that make their hot dogs out of only high quality cuts of meat. Of course any hot dog that a discount store is giving away for five cents is probably not from a high-quality brand, and the fact is that there are a lot of hot dogs out there made with liquefied bones and feet and things, every part of chickens and pigs that you can imagine, with little regulation and oversight, crappy conditions for underpaid workers, and corners cut at every available opportunity. You get what you pay for.

In other news! I’ve added some more photos to the gallery of awesome people who are getting a free issue of my newest minicomic! It’s too late to get your own free copy, but if you want to purchase it, you can get the print minicomic (with hand-silkscreened cover!) here, and a much cheaper digital download of it here.

(ps: did you notice the two savory crepes I ate this weekend?? There will be more info about those sometime in the next few weeks.)

Given how many years we’ve been together, and how often Niles sets me up for jokes like this, you would THINK that I would catch on and be prepared for the punchlines, instead of happily believing that there is a “most famous sushi restaurant” in the whole of Japan, and that Niles had figured out which one it was, and was prepared to take me there.

Oh but hey in other news OMG YOU GUYS we’re going to Japan in January!! Subarashii!! Niles’s brother Sam has been living in Tokyo for many years, and so has my cousin Steve. We’ve been wanting to visit for a long time now, and Niles figured out some ninja financial moves so we can afford it. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it. I’ve been stuffing my brain with Japanese language podcasts; I’ve been Google street-viewing the streets outside our hotel. I have serious, serious plans to eat all of the sushi I can find. It’s gonna be great!!

Whaaat else, besides OMG JAPAN. Oh! Once again: if you have issues 1-5 of Shuteye, let me know and I will send you issue #6 for free! I’ll have it up for normal sale by early next week.

Also, I painted some more Pokémon butcher diagrams, and I feel just horrible about it. You guys have got to stop me before I make more!

Sushi: it’s delicious. Tell the press!

(Feel free to correct my Japanese, I’m teaching myself with videogames and internet podcasts, it’s a flawed system at best.)

So, sorry, I feel like I kind of half-assed this one, but I was having delicious sushi with Corinne Mucha and Beck Kramer and I got kind of distracted by the fun comics talk and the deliciousness of the sushi, and I hadn’t thought of anything to draw for you, and then Corinne was all “draw sushi” and I was all, oh, twist my arm, because I don’t LOVE DRAWING SUSHI or anything.

I usually end up making something on Sunday afternoons. It’s become a bit of a habit at this point. I had already planned to make a bunch of rice and oatmeal this weekend, so I could have it later on in the week, but this afternoon I found myself wandering through the Logan Square Farmers Market just as it was shutting down, and I bought a bag of apples and a big butternut squash (how is it time for butternut squash already?? Too soon! but I bought it anyway). I took them home, chopped both of them up, added some shallots and sliced garlic, coated it lightly with olive oil, sprinkled it with some spices and put it all in a 400 degree oven until it was ready. I’m going to put it on salads later this week, with some blue cheese, and it will be very tasty.

Since I have a full time job, and I freelance, and I do this comic, and some other comics projects, sometimes it can feel like I’m running nonstop. You’d think I would feel I don’t have time for things like cooking – especially when it could be so easy to grab something on the way home, or snack on something in the fridge. And especially when we’re talking about something as time consuming as skinning a large winter squash and chopping it up into small cubes. But preparing food feels so relaxing to me, especially if it takes a long time. It’s a quiet, meditative process that takes more manual effort than it does brainpower, which feels like a pleasant break from the norm for me.

Half the time that I decide to make something, I’m not even hungry by the time I’m done, and I end up putting it in the fridge for later. I always think it’s kind of funny when I just want to cook something, but not eat it.

ALSO: Laura Park suggested I try some new crop rice, and I found some last week at the Korean market on Kimball. It’s… it’s hard to describe. The smell of it uncooked is almost alive, it’s potent and yeasty and smells young, somehow. When it’s cooked, the texture is amazing – it’s smoother and creamier than normal rice, almost like it’s closer to grits or tapioca or something. It’s amazing. You wouldn’t think there’d be that much difference! But if you can find it, I recommend trying it out. It seems less important for something like sushi, where you’re letting the rice cool, but a hot, fresh bowl of new crop rice is magically comforting.