Category: Spiders

Spooky Spring Photo Challenge

Celebrating May Day with a 25-day photo challenge. Head on over to Instagram and post your favorite photos representing Spooky Spring. Join in any day!

Don’t forget to tag your pics using #spookyspringphotochallenge

HH Spooky Spring Photo Challenge Redux

 

Recipe of the Month – December: Spiderweb Soup Halloween Recipe

A day late and a dollar short, that’s what’s going on my tombstone.  Apparently, I was naughty this year, so Krampus brought me a nasty cold for Christmas. Not sick enough to die, luckily, but sick enough to miss my blog post-deadline. Mea culpa. It’s been a rotten week.

The good news is being sick means you get to eat soup, cuz soup is great for colds. It’s also great for cold, rainy days. So, thanks to the folks over at the Gourmet Food Store for this perfectly simple and tasty recipe for Spiderweb Soup with Halloween shaped croutons: https://www.gourmetfoodstore.com/spiderweb-soup-halloween-recipe-15336

spiderweb-soup-halloween
Spiderweb Soup from Gourmet Food Store

Ingredients:

  • 6 medium tomatoes
  • 3 medium carrots
  • 1 ½ tbsp. Sugar
  • 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
  • 4-½ cups vegetable broth
  • ¼ tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tbsp. ginger powder
  • ¼ tsp. ground cloves
  • 8 slices white bread
  • 2 tbsp. Chopped fresh herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, and rosemary)
  • 2 tbsp. Olive oil
  • 16 peppercorns (pink if available)
  • 7 oz. crème fraiche
  • Special equipment: Halloween-themed cookie cutters, piping bag

tomatoes

For the full recipe and cooking instructions, please go here: https://www.gourmetfoodstore.com/spiderweb-soup-halloween-recipe-15336

If you still have leftover ham, this soup pairs fangtastically with a ham and cheese panini.

ham and cheese chef Akis Petretzikis
ham and cheese – chef Akis Petretzikis

 

Scary Bites

Some of you may have noticed there was no Haiku of the Week.  Please forgive me.  I suffered a sudden health scare this week.  Recently, during a trip to a local botanical park in Austin, TX, I was bitten up by mosquitoes. The bites turned out to be more serious than I thought because I fell ill with a blood infection. Luckily, no serious disease. I’m now recovering and should be totally fine. Haiku will return next week, but as summer approaches, I can’t help but remind everyone to please use insect repellant.

Also, think twice about using those flowery shampoos and fruity lotions when camping and traipsing through the woods. We wouldn’t want insects to take over the world just because we want to smell good.

Bogleech-MagictheGathering Insects-heartstabbermosquito-jasonfelix
Bogleech: MagictheGathering Insects- heartstabbermosquito by Jason Felix

For more heartstopping terror, go here: http://www.bogleech.com/magicinsects.html

The Ten Creepiest Urban Legends

Urban legends are stories that are meant to scare us and typically serve as a warning or have some type of moral lesson attached. Every state has their own urban legends, some states even share legends, changing the details to fit their locale or whichever narrative is needed, but the core plot stay the same.  The ones I have chosen for this list are the creepiest found in the USA, and some of them are based on real-life true stories! Can you figure out which ones?

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  1. Turn on the Light

After partying most of the night, a co-ed decides to spend the night with a boy she met at the party.  She returns to dorm room to retrieve her keys, careful not to wake her roommate. In the dark room she can hear the sleeping roommate’s heavy breathing and assumes she’s got a cold. When she returns the next day, she finds her roommate’s dead body and the note written in blood on the wall, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”

This story is sometimes told with the co-ed being more studious and returning to retrieve a book for an all-night study session, but the end-result is always the same. This legend has been around 50 years or more and most likely was started by a parent worried about their college-bound kid.

Moral of the Story:     Screw your roommate’s feelings, always turn on the damn light.

  1. Licked Hand

One night, a woman who lives alone with her nice little dog, hears on the radio that an escaped lunatic is on the loose in her town. She locks up the house tight and goes to bed with her faithful canine companion, who stays close by her bedside all night. When the woman wakes the next morning, she finds her pooch slaughtered and note written in blood on the bathroom mirror, “Humans can lick too.”

Some variations of this legend feature an old woman and sometimes, a young girl. Sometimes she wakes in the middle of the night, hearing a dripping sound, and sometimes, the pet is alive and well at the end. Like the ‘Turn on the Light’ legend, the killer rubs the survivor’s nose in the fact that they barely escaped death.

Moral of the Story:     You’re never going to be in control of your own death and maybe you should get a cat.

Continue reading “The Ten Creepiest Urban Legends” →