Ramen Noodles and Caterpillar Blossoms�

2002-08-20

I found out today that anything will improve the taste of packaged ramen noodles. I keep a couple of packages in my desk for emergency food. They have a thousand year half-life. They may go stale, but won't be in my lifetime. Today was the emergency. I forgot my lunch and have no cash and no time. Normally I would at least put tabasco or taco sauce in them. If I were at home I would drop in some frozen vegetables. Trader Joe's makes a great stir fry mix. No tabasco, no taco sauce and certainly no vegetables. So I stole a tablespoon of someone's salad dressing. And it was a definite improvement. So I add salad dressing to the growing list of things that will improve ramen noodles. I draw the line at ketchup, though.

I found a million baby caterpillars yesterday! I was so excited. They're really teeny. As small as the lower case L on this page. I picked all the ones I could reach standing on my stepladder. I pick the leaf they're on so as not to be squishing baby caterpillars. I couldn't reach them all. Just as well, my nursery is full and the wasps have to have something to eat.

So I'll be stripping my vine bare to feed baby caterpillars. Maybe not so bad, though. I've found that the caterpillars love to eat the blossoms. The blossoms bloom for a couple of days, then close up and the next one down the vine blooms. I nip off the spent bloom and feed it to the caterpillars. It provides a lot more food to the caterpillar than the leaves do. And I sure don't need the nasty orange fruit that results if the blossoms have been fertilzed. The tag on the plant when I bought it said that the fruit were edible. Edible they may be; good to eat they're not. I put a couple of blossoms across the leaves with the caterpillars on them and within ten minutes all of them had moved to the blossoms and were munching away. I'm hoping that blossoms are not the caterpillar equivalent of junk food. I'll have to be sure to put some regular leaves in.

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