Spinderella Story con't. and Frog Frenzy

So in she came to live back in her habitat.  She would usually hang out in the cave where she had spun the web mass.  Cut to a couple of weeks later...
     It was about mid-August by this time.  We had some sort of celebration at our home which was the reason for a yellow tablecloth dressing up our kitchen table.  Someone had been checking on Spinderella before we sped out the door for a 4-H activity, and her habitat was left on the kitchen table, which ended up being a blessing in disguise.  We walked in the door  and much to our surprise and shock...there were several tiny moving black dots on the yellow table cloth!  Gotta love the table cloth.  Believe it or not...WE HAD BABY SPIDERS!!!!  No kiddin'.  There were several baby spiders on the tablecloth.  A few had made their way to the door wall which I painstakingly caught with a piece of paper and gently set them outside.  Had we arrived home any later and we might have had a slew of spiders inhabiting our home.  We were weirdly pretty smug about the fact that we actually hatched spiders!  It's a fun story for us to tell and I know folks think we're pretty strange but it's an experience that my kids will remember their whole lives.  I guess you had to be there and only science-y country gals can appreciate the tale.

FROG FRENZY
      Here's another quick similar tale that my boys still talk about 10 years later.  We had a pond behind our former home.  We arrived home after dark one rainy evening in early summer only to be met by a mass invasion of FROGS  on our paved cup-de-sac.  I saw this as another teachable moment, sent the boys up our driveway for buckets and set off to catch frogs.  I drove our van down our little street, dodging frogs of all kinds and sizes, headlights shining bright to illuminate the road and watched the boys with delight as they caught frogs. They were 5 and 7 at the time.   After the catching frenzy we put a board over the buckets and went off to bed.  Cut to the next morning...we unveiled the buckets and peered in with wonder.  One by one we took out each frog, observed them and let them go.  There were several kinds and every size imaginable.  They had caught 60some frogs in about 15 minutes.  They neighbors thought I was nuts, the boys thought I was the coolest mom ever.  It was an experience we'll always remember.

Picture Of The Week

                                                                 Lovely Bounty

Chapter 2 "A Spider Tale" - Crazy Country Living

So, now we have this "pet" spider - very large, black, hairy, spider.  After consulting with Ms. Google, I found that people actually do keep these darlings as pets, so perhaps we are not that kooky,   he hum.
    Well, we kept said spider for several weeks snatching bugs to keep her on the hunt.  This cool little habitat has this little cave like structure in one corner that she eventually grew very fond of.  Before we knew it she had built this web/nest inside there and she would hang out there for the day. They do not build the typical lacy web like most spiders do.  They have this small thick tangled mass of webbing.  Well, she holed up in there for weeks.  We never saw her poke her head out or come hunting the nice juicy insects that we painstakingly  caught for her.  After two or three weeks of her being AWOL we figured she went up to spidey  heaven.  We figured it was time to open the habitat outdoors and let her out(if she was still alive) and if not it was just time to get the habitat outside.  With no pouncing show to watch she had lost her charm.  So out she went in mid July.  The habitat was stationed by our deck just in case something started happening.
     Two weeks went by.  I was headed out the back door, toward the deck, and who was there to greet me but "Spinderella".  That is what my then 9 year old son named her.  She was sitting on our back steps literally saying "Hey, I've missed you and I want to live in my habitat in your house".  I understand spider-speak.  I made the assumption that it was our Spinderella so I scooped her up, gathered up the habitat and went on a hunt for feeder flies.

To be continued.........

Picture of the Week

I took these photos in my backyard early one morning.  A small stream of sunlight was pouring down through the trees showing off the beauty of summer.

A Spider Tale

Chapter 1

   Ok, you are going to think I'm a pure lunatic - I don't know, perhaps I am.  Maybe I'm strange, a nerd, weird-o, kooky.    Really, I'm pretty sane.  But what I am is a teacher(for real) a bit of a science geek, biologist, zoologist, entomologist, farm girl, country girl and critter lover.  That includes bugs, insects and arachnids.  Now, I will confess that I do not want said spiders crawling on me and I was known to let out a blood curdling screech many years ago when a tan spider the size of a watermelon - ok, maybe not that big- was crawling up my collar after a war with the weeds in the garden one summer.  I just find nature and all of it's buzzing, crawling, creepiness  and crowing animals, ah... interesting. And so that is  the lead in to my story, which has now evolved into two summers.
     So, last summer I find on my foyer floor a very large black hairy spider with green eyes and white markings.  She  had apparently hitched a ride on some beach towels drying on our front porch swing.  Enter my alter ego the entemologist me.  I grab a peanut butter jar and instantly she has a new home for the night.  My  intention was to research her a bit just to see what she was and educate the family on her lifestyle.   I really was a teacher for 14 years before I had my children so the teacher in me is constantly setting up rituals such as these to "teach" my three boys about the world.
     After very little research we found out that she was a female Daring Jumping Spider.  Jumping is the operative word here, remember that.   Later that evening we decided we had better try to feed her something.  That was a great excuse to catch the flies that the boys let in the house.  So the first fly gets nabbed and into the jar it goes.  Within seconds that spider pounced - hence the jumping part- on that fly and held on for dear life.  As it turns out they enjoy the feast and leave the carcass.  Many more flies and light buzzing moths followed that night.  Seeing this as the teachable moment, the next day I fixed up a nice habitat in one of our many aquariums meant for this purpose and in she went - for the rest of the summer.  Which meant we were on bug catching duty for a couple of months.  Here's an internet photo of a Daring Jumping Spider.  It's a better shot than any of those I took.


STAY TUNED...TO BE CONTINUED.

Daring Jumping Spider

Summer Picture of the Week

                                                       AWWW, need I say more?

Fabulous Tomato Eggplant Bake

     Here it is mid August and the tomatoes are starting to pile up.  I never have enough at one time to can but I end up popping them in the freezer and using them in chili and spaghetti sauce over the winter.  I also had an eggplant that I wanted to use as it was on the verge of turning brown.  So I searched the internet and found some other tomato eggplant bakes but they were just plain boring!  I was looking for a bit more pizazz so I came up with this recipe.  My 15 year old son ate 75% of it!  That's when I knew it was a winner!

Fabulous Tomato Eggplant Bake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

4 large tomatoes sliced in 1/4 - 1/2" slices
1 medium eggplant in 1/4 - 1/2" slices
1 large onion sliced paper thin
1 Tbl. salt
1/3 cup olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic crushed
1 Tbl. fresh basil
1 Tbl. fresh parsley
1 Tbl. parmesan cheese-the powdery kind in a jar
dash of pepper

Drizzle after baking

1/3 cup olive oil
1 Tbl. fresh basil
1Tbl. fresh parsley
1 clove crushed garlic
1/2 Tbl. balsamic vinegar
6-10 kalamata olives(to your taste)

feta cheese
shaved parmesan cheese



Slice the eggplant, layer it in a colander and sprinkle it with the salt.  Set this in your sink to sweat and drain.  This will eliminate some of the water in the eggplant.   Let sit for about a half hour.  In the meantime, slice your tomatoes and onions.  Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, herbs, garlic, parmesan cheese and pepper.

Time to layer the vegetables.  Start with a tomato.  Next to it add an onion slice.  Now add an eggplant slice.  Now another onion slice.  So your rhythm will go like this...tomato, onion, eggplant, onion, tomato, onion, eggplant, onion, tomato...Layer all of your slices until you use them up.  I ended up with three rows of slices.
      Drizzle your olive oil mixture over the veggies.  Bake in the over at 350 for 30-45 minutes, until they just start to brown on the top.

While this is baking, let's make the drizzle that tops it off.  In a bowl, combine all of the drizzle ingredients.  Add a bit more olive oil, if you would like.  Let this set and ferment while the veggies bake.
      Once your vegetables are lightly browned, remove them from the oven and drizzle the Drizzle mixture over all of the slices.  Use a brush to spread this around.

Now top the whole thing with feta cheese AND shaved parmesan cheese to taste.  Oh WOW!  This is so yummy.  I could eat only this for dinner!

Variations.  I'll probably make this a few more times this summer.  These are the variations I'll try out.
I'll cut some thin fresh mozzarella cheese and/or zucchini to layer between the slices.  The next time, I'll chop some marinated mozzarella balls and top with this instead of the feta.  I'll still include the parmesan.

So give it a try and let me know what you think.  I tend to alter recipes to our taste so add more garlic, take out the basil, top with different cheeses,  whatever gets the job done for you.  Either way let's use up those tomatoes and enjoy.