Adventures in Culinary Experience.

So. Nighthawk is scheduled for a radiation treatment in two weeks, which according to all things thyroid cancer means that now he gets to spend two weeks on a low-iodine diet (LID). (Keeping low levels of iodine in the system now will result in what few thyroid cells he’s got left — the ones we’re trying to kill so they don’t get cancerous — getting really really thirsty for the radioactive iodine he’ll get two weeks fron now. Somewhere, one of my dozen-odd grammar teachers just cringed in pain at that sentence structure, but doesn’t know why.)

Anyway, the low-iodine diet means avoiding food high in iodine, only eating small amounts of food low in iodine, and mostly eating iodine-free foods.

Or summed up differently, no dairy, no seafood, no soy, no egg yolks or foods containing egg yolk, no chocolate, no iodized salt, no bread/bakery products because they’re probably fortified and/or contain iodized salt, no prepackaged food because it might contain iodized salt, or red dye number 3.

He can have six ounces of meat a day, pasta that doesn’t contain any of the stuff in the last paragraph (which means semolina or rice noodles, or yolk-free kosher egg noodles, thank you Manischewitz!), up to 4 servings of bread that we make ourselves following low-iodine guidelines, or other grains like oatmeal and similar grainy things or salt-free Matzos (thanks again Manschewitz!), sugar, jam, jelly, honey, soda, tea, beer, wine, fruit joices, and all the fruits and veggies you want as long as you’re not including rhubarb, marachino cherries, rhubarb, or the aforementioned soybeans.

Now, add to that the fact that with his Cystic Fibrosis and Cystic Fibrosis related Diabetes, he’s supposed to maintain a 3000 calorie per day diet (minimum) to maintain weight, and he needs to do it in such a way that he can keep his sugar under control.

Yeah, we’re screwed.

But so far in the last 36 hours I’ve baked cranberry-applesauce muffins, made LID-safe beer bread, and made tomato sauce entirely from scratch that wasn’t absolutely horrible. I’ve learned that my stonewear loaf pan is not yet seasoned to the point that it’s safe to bake bread without some kind of Pam. I’ve learned that a butter knife is not the optimal tool for prying bread out of a stonewear loaf pan. I’ve learned that sugar will cut the acidity from tomato sauce. Sugar, brown sugar, some honey, and gee-that-still-tastes-acidic-to-me more brown sugar might, in fact, be overkill.

And no, neither of us have any idea how much sugar’s in any of this stuff, so the diabetes, yeah, that’s been fun.

But I’m learning to cook…. that’s good, right?

Turkey day has come and gone…

I stuffed myself on chicken liver and egg, spinach dip, hot crab dip, turkey, peanut soup, oyster stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, sweet potatoes, crescent rolls, shrimp, wine, mince meat and pumpkin pie, and cappucino.

I’m thankful for all of the bounties I enjoyed today, as well as the happy family I shared them with. I wish you and yours equal blessings and bounties not only today, but every day.

The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch

When I first started drawing comics, I tried to draw every comic with a full (or almost-full) view of all the characters, full backgrounds, no cut-and-paste characters, and accounting for almost every minute of the characters lives.

I also, strangely, almost ever used the beat panel, or as some apparently call it, the Silent Penultimate Panel (SPP).

It’s been almost two years since I started drawing comics (December 14th being the anniversary) and a lot has changed. I still have to physically stop myself from drawing all of every character. I still draw fairly detailed backgrounds, but even I don’t know where the hell Lila’s desk is or why it’s surrounded by a sea of orange. My anti-cut-and-paste stance made it about 6 comics, and I do skip around a bit more in characters’ lives (because, really, walking around and stuff gets pretty boring).

March 27, 2005, was the first comic I posted where the empty panel didn’t just stand for the passage of time or a different camera view, but the first true “beat panel” I attempted wasn’t until April 29, 2006.

Even now I’m kind of torn on them. They take up a lot of space, comic-wise, and don’t accomplish as much, and I’m not sure I’m good enough a writer to really say that they’re effective when I use them. So I try to avoid them (though lately I’ve abused them a bit).

And maybe that’s a good thing, because today I found The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch, a blog specifically dedicated to display the abuse of beat-panels. Veeeeery eeenteresting. And definitely has me thinking more about my timing.

Child’s Play 2006

This year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia finally finally finally got involved in Child’s Play and while I don’t honestly expect anyone to give me anything in exchange for this scrawly comic and whine-fest that I host, with the holidays coming and much stuff going on, the best present you-the-reader could give to me would be to give to them.

Why, you ask?

Well, as has been mentioned before, my husband has Cystic Fibrosis. (As does Lila’s husband Cole in the comic. Coincidence?) Nighthawk’s been treated at CHoP. He’s been hospitalized at CHoP. He’s become healthy again within their halls. And he’s been bored senseless in between.

Hospitals look scary when you first get there, especially where emergency rooms and stuff are involved, but really most of the time they are boring. Sometimes you’re so sick you don’t care. Other times, you’re so healthy that you can get up and wander around and make trouble scaring the nurses by drinking apple juice out of the plastic urinal bottles. In between, you’re too tired to get up (or not allowed because of IVs or tests or whatever), and you’ve already seen everything on TV (or can’t afford to have it on) and you filled up your coloring book and you can’t even hang out with the other kids because you’re contagious or they are or maybe they’re too sick to play. And when it’s over the holidays and your folks are strapped for cash because you’re in the hospital and they have to miss work and they have to pay ridiculous co-pays on the insurance and Philly isn’t anywhere close to where you actually live, and gas isn’t cheap, well, it sucks big time.

So if all you do this winter is buy one book, or one video game, or one movie that’s going to keep a bored and sick kid a little happier, well, you’ve done something that looks little but is actually very big.

(And you don’t have to give to CHoP — you could give to any Child’s Play hospital. Or to any other hospital that’s put a wish list up on Amazon. Or just to your local hospital. You know, whatever works for you.)

As for me, I have some money I’ve saved up for charity that I have to go spend now. Thanks!

Ohnorobot! comic search finally in place.

So I finally got off my butt and added an Ohnorobot search to the site. (Note the addition of a new searchbox to the left.)

Of course, it needs your help to transcribe comics…. either by using the link you just saw, or by clicking a comic title in the archive and looking to see if it has a “Transcribe This Comic” button under the comic. (For the newest comics, click the “navigation links” link underneath the comic on the homepage.) If you see the transcribe button, go ahead and clicky-clicky!

(hint: some of the early comics have transcriptions in the alt tags for the images, as that’s how I’d originally planned to make the site searchable.)

Next up: I might actually advertise on Project Wonderful.

Oh, and it’d probably be good if I started Saturday’s comic.