Hey hey!

I have been enjoying a bit more fun in the sun with friends and family.  I've also been returning to get some take out from some favorite restaurants.  The Central Great Plains and Colorado have a regional outfit called Old Chicago.  They make deep dish pizzas that are fantastic.  The Thai Chicken pizza is my favorite.  It has sweet Thai sauce instead of pizza sauce, so it's more specialty than traditional, but oh my do I love it.  So good.

Backyard barbecues have also been something I've sorely missed this past year.  My wife and I hung out with some friends recently on their patio where they made us some A+ burgers and Polish sausages.  I announced that I would eat the h*** out that grilled foodage.  And eat the h*** out of it I most certainly did.

I'm also marinating some steaks with a mixture of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce and brown sugar.  I'll be searing them and then using the trusty sous vide.  It shall be epic.

These are all summer treats for me.  I usually skew more on the herbivore end of my omnivore diet.  I enjoy making black bean rice bowls and a soup concoction that I call chili veggie soupy.

Do you have any fave foods that you recommend either from restaurants or that you make?

Fernallus is one of the main characters in The New Players.  He is a young and highly intelligent Dragon who often assumes the guise of a Human male with varying garish hair colors.  The top image shows him in his more fearsome Dragon form.  He appears far more affable as a green-haired non-reptile in the next rendering.

He is a close friend of the Burnhelt family and Tamona.  He also makes terrible jokes.  But they love him anyway.  Their enemies do not.

Reckless by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

I'm a a big fan of this creative team's crime comics.  This hardcover trade focuses on a man named Ethan Reckless in the early 1980's.  He's sort of a low-grade, sloppy, one-man A-Team.  He was once an FBI undercover agent that infiltrated a violent anti-war group in the late years of the Vietnam War.  It ended badly, leaving him with a scar.  He now makes ends meet by working out of a closed movie theater and hiring himself out to people who need help with a non-advertised 800 number.  People who are often shady with conflicting agendas.  Things start going sideways when a woman from his undercover past reaches out to him.  Great dialogue, gritty art, and realistic violence.  Check it out.

The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie

The First Law series is always fun for a grim-dark fantasy world.  It's a mix of steampunk colliding with a more savage land of Norse vikings.  The wry humor in the narrative and dialogue is my favorite part.  The POV characters all think they're in the right, but almost always do the wrong thing that achieves the exact opposite result of their intentions.  This is most true for Leo, a heroic idiot who is easy to manipulate, especially by the ambitious Savine.  The foppish Prince Orso emerges as the most likable character as civil war creeps closer and closer.  Steven Pacey does a great job with the audio book reading with many distinct voices.  Give it a read or listen.

That's all for this time.

Stay smart.  Stay safe.

Jim