Okay, it is October and the time for Halloween decorations.
This scary looking creature was decorating the front of our house last Fall. It is an "orb-weaver". It is not toxic to humans.
Orb-weavers are not aggressive and seldom bite. (I checked!) They live in garden areas and create large webs that can be six feet in diameter. They hang upside down in the center of their webs while waiting for dinner to arrive. Very cool, and perfect for this time of year!
The first time we had one of these visitors was two years ago. It set up a web off of the back porch. Since it wasn't near our eating area at all, and my research told me it's really an okay arachnid, we just let it be. Friends thought I was nuts, but others assured me that they do not come inside the house. They presumably like the outdoors, not closets.
A year later, what I assume to be a descendant of the first spider set up a home over the garage, as shown above.
This year one spun a web in an inconvenient place on the back porch. We had to break it up to be able to use the grill. It made a new web across the stairs to the porch. We had to knock that one down, too. It must have given up after that!!!
So no spider this year, but isn't that a beautiful web?
I spun up some peanut butter cookies yesterday to send to John. You can find recipes like this easily....it's been around a while. The first time I ever tasted one of these cookies was when the art teacher at my school brought them in. (This was even before "gluten free" was in my vocabulary.) They were delicious. I got the recipe from him, but didn't actually make them (and of course tweak the ingredients to my personal style) until I needed gluten free treats. Here's what I did:
HH's Peanut Butter Cookies
(Makes 36-38 cookies.)
Preheat oven to 350.
Mix in a bowl:
1 15- or 16-oz jar creamy peanut butter,
1 cup white sugar,
3/4 cup brown sugar,
1/2 tsp vanilla, and
2 eggs.
Use a 1 Tbs measuring spoon to place little balls of this mixture onto parchment paper.
Roll the balls in granulated sugar.
Flatten the balls slightly with a fork, making a traditional crisscross pattern.
Bake 10-11 minutes.
Cool completely before removing from the parchment paper.
If you look carefully you will see that I forgot about the rolling in sugar step. They still taste great. Sorry about that error....
I did some calculations and these are about 106 calories per cookie.
