S is for Sand

It is amazing how sand varies around the world.

Even in one state, like Florida or even Hawaii, sand can vary from beach to beach. It is made from a variety of things: crush rocks eroded from mountains that have made their way downstream to the coast, lava rocks and coral pounded by ocean waves, shells worn down from wave action, dumped glass and pottery tumbled in the surf, housing materials broken by hurricane storm surge and taken to sea to be tumbled around for years to come by the waves.

I have found pottery shards, well-tumbled glass, worn-down chips of china dinner plates and tea cups (one has part of the manufactures name on it), brick pebbles and more.

Sand can be pink, black, brown, white and every shade in between. It is course with large grains or fine as flour.

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Sand blowing on a windy day at Gulf Shores

They all have advantages and disadvantages. Dark sands tend to hold the sun’s heat so be aware and wear shoes on these beaches. Even a grey sand, like Turtle Beach, FL, or a brown sand, like Ocean City, MD can be hot. White sands reflect the sun but compacted, like areas of Siesta Key public beach in Florida, can hold heat (my experience). Loose sands are tougher to walk in than fine sands. Fine sands, on a windy day, can damage electronic equipment (cameras) if the sand finds its way inside. And speaking of windy days, regardless of the sand, you’ll get sandblasted. The coarser the sand, they more you’ll feel it, but fine powery or sugary sand can rough up your skin, too.  Keep sunglasses on you and your children on windy days to avoid sand in your eyes.

I keep a collection of sand, something I started when I homeschooled so my boys could compare sands. Most I’ve collected but some I’ve had friends or family send to me.  If you collect sand, look on my Pinterest board for ideas on how to display it.dscn8461

What’s your favorite sand?

 

 

S is for Seaweed

Often, when visiting the beach, seaweed washes ashore and stays. The large piles dry out in the sun, usually attracts flies and can sometimes stink. It can be annoying to both the beachcomber and coastal swimmer. Floating around in the warm waves of the ocean or the Gulf can be a drag if you get surrounded by a mat of seaweed. But as nasty, in a sensory way, that swimming in seaweed can be, did you know it is nutritionally wonderful for you?

There are many types of seaweed and they are edible, although some do not digest as well as others.  Seaweed is super nutritious, providing Calcium, Vitamin K and Iron to our diets all wrapped up in a low-calorie food.

There are many sources on line for edible seaweed and how to prepare it. Some you can eat raw.  Search around the internet if you are interested in learning about edible seaweed from your local beach. My favorite source is a local Asian grocery store.

Nori chips and other seaweed snacks are so tasty. You can find them now in most every grocery store. When my boys were little we would hang out at the local Single-A baseball games (my husband worked there) with some of the player’s wives and children. One would bring seaweed snacks with her that she brought from California and my kids loved them. I could not find them anywhere near by us back them but love having nori chips available now. If you haven’t tried them, please do. Check the organic foods or Asian foods section of your grocery store or stop by your local Asian grocer

SEAWEED RECIPES 

Nori Chips

Seaweed Salad 

MY SEAWEED STORY

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’d know that when I lived in FL and AL my boys were in 4-H and they worked on a marine  project. We had a large fish tank and temporarily kept a variety of critters in our tank for observation. When we left FL our Extension officer suggested we take the tank and a few critter with us and continue the project there, which we did. But we ran into a problem: We had sea urchins. Sea urchins eat seaweed. They eat a lot of seaweed.  That summer my car was not in good spirits so we couldn’t make many trips to the beach (about a 45 minute drive). I solved that problem by enlisting some friends who were going to the beach to have their kids collect bags of seaweed for me. They brought back a lot of zip-top bags filled with dried seaweed which was perfect.

Then the oil spilled into the Gulf near us and our beaches were shut down. As the beaches closed we couldn’t get there to collect seaweed for the urchins and my supply dwindled. And we couldn’t put the urchins back into the Gulf since the water almost as far as Apalachicola was off limits. It could be a death sentence for the urchins. We lived on the Mobile Bay and I was happy to find a variety of sea weed for them in the salty part of the Bay. But there wasn’t enough. A friend from Sarasota and her family came to visit us and agreed to take the urchins and a few other little critters back with them. They ceremoniously  put them into the Sarasota Bay where we originally got them.

Observing these urchins was a treat for all of us and new friends in Alabama. They would climb the side of the tank just a little bit to get above a piece of seaweed and hold on with little suction arms. Then the urchins would grab the seaweed and munch on it with it’s “teeth” located underneath it’s test. It would use its spines and suction arms to move the seaweed into its mouth. Urchins eat fast.

Here are some pictures of our aquarium. Click on each for a caption.

an urchin attached to the side of my aquarium
our sea urchins eating seaweed

Note: Sea creatures belong in the sea. We were given permission by our local Extension office to house them. We were also given permission by our local Extension office to take them across state lines for educational purposes. What we took was approved by our Extension officer because they existed where we were going and could be put back into their natural habitat. Our new Extension office in AL knew what we had, too. If you keep pets and no longer want them, do not put them into the wild. Your pet may not be native to the region and may cause some eco-system damage. Take your pet to a local Extension office, wild-life specialist or pet shop to drop off or get advice about passing it on to the next owner.  A local school might also want to take it for education purposes.  But do not put it into the wild.

 

S is for Sea

We all grew up hearing about the 7 Seas but there are many more than just the 7 from ancient times. There are also 5 ocean regions and within each ocean are many additional seas. Seas are also landlocked in many continents.

Did you know there is really no consensus on the definition of SEA? That’s what I read somewhere.

I thought I’d just list the seas around the world here but after looking into it, I think I’ll just pass you along to Wikipedia’s List of Seas.

Then I thought I’d do an story on everything SEA, like SEAweed, SEAgull etc. But, again, the list is long, so I’ll send you to another website for an exhaustive list of words that start with SEA. It includes words like seam (sea+m) but many others in the SEA theme I write about.

If you are a beachcomber you know several of our favorite SEA words: seashell, seashore, seaglass, seabean, seabird, seaweed, seahorse.

Seashells/Craftybeachcomber

 

 

 

S is for Squid

Yum!

Squid is a favorite dish in my family. Trouble is we can’t find it often (except frozen prepared brands) where we currently live. But when we do eat it, we savor every bite.

  • Squid ink noodles
  • Calamari fried or sauteed
  • Squid Kebabs
  • Stuffed, grilled, in a stew
  • Salad

If you can find some good squid try this recipe:

PARMESAN-CRUSTED CALAMARI KEBABS

Calamari tubes, 1 pound cleaned

30 6-in skewers

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup panko

½ tsp salt

½ tsp freshly ground pepper

1 large egg white, lightly beaten

Favorite sauce: we like using Ginger People ® Sweet Ginger Chili sauce or garlic-drawn butter

Slice tubes in half, lengthwise. Thread onto skewers. Combine cheese, EVOO, panko, salt and pepper into a shallow dish. Brush the squid lightly with egg white. Dredge squid into panko mixture. Place skewers on a lightly greased rack in a broiler pan. Broil calamari 5-6 inches from heat for 2-4 minutes or until golden brown. If using wooden skewers, watch carefully since they may burn.

Serve with your favorite sauce.

S is for Starfish

I love Starfish!!

They come in so many colors and sizes, are so incredibly strong and can regenerate limbs. How cool is that?

Here are 2 starfish stories…

ONE

When the boys were younger and we lived in Florida, we had a salt-water tank for their aquatic project with 4-H.  We could catch and raise several species of sea critters from the Gulf of Mexico and the Sarasota Bay, then release them back into the wild and catch some more. The kids seined in the Bay with other 4-H-ers for specimens.

 

The bottom of the tank consisted of small shells and sand and there were a few large pieces of rock and coral (found on the beach) for critters to hide by or in. Someone found a huge whelk shell with a hermit crab inside. This thing was big; about the size of my iPad. We decided to keep it for a little while and observe it. We also had a few urchins (2 types), snails, a crab and some other things. Later, one of the kids in the group found a starfish so we added it to the mix. After placing it in the tank we all got ready for our home-school club’s Christmas party and took off. Arriving home hours later, we found the starfish had been attacked.

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Sea Star missing 2 arms

It was missing two arms, one gone, the other sitting at the other end of the tank. Lucky for that starfish we lived close enough to the water to get it to safety. I can’t remember if we took it to the beach or put him in the canal across the street from our house. Starfish have interesting bodies which provide them protection from predators but they can break off their arms when threatened. Perhaps that’s what happened and the missing arm became dinner for someone in the tank.

TWO

One year, late in the season, we took a family trip to Apalachicola, FL for the weekend. A storm had passed through the days before which is always exciting for me because I love comb the beaches after a storm. The wave action brought on shore a ton of shells, sea cucumbers, horseshoe crabs and starfish.  I photographed a lot of them but my favorite was of a starfish. I have since used that one (an edited version) as my branding for CraftyBeachcomber on both the Facebook page and the Etsy store.

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CraftyBeachcomber

I love starfish!! What’s your favorite sea critter?

 

 

S is for Seahorse

4 FACTS ABOUT SEAHORSES

  1. The don’t have teeth. They don’t have stomachs. So seahorses eat their food whole and digest quickly.
  2. Females lay eggs in the male’s belly pouch. The eggs hatch after 45 days.
  3. There are more than 40 species of seahorses world-wide.
  4. Seahorses can’t swim very well, so they anchor themselves with their tails to sea grasses, coral, and anything else.design-43

S is for Shovel & Pail Set

What’s the one thing you have to take onto the beach with you? A shovel & pail set, of course.

Since early childhood, you learned you always need a shovel and pail to play in the sand. There have been some amazing sets available to children over the years from the metal set with cool art on the pail to designer plastic pails with decorative handled shovels.

Kids are fun to watch with their shovels and pails. They dig and dig and dig. They run to the water to fill the pail and then back to dump the water in the hole. Most of the time the water sinks into the sand but they keep running back for more water in  hopes to fill up the hole one day.

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Creative Commons

My boys, growing up on the beach, had shovels of all sizes. There were some that broke easily, others that never broke but ended up at friends houses so we just bought more. Short handles, long handles and some with long wooden handles; we still have these.

With a long-handled shovel you can conquer the world or dig a hole for your brother to fall into head first:

Shovels and pails are necessary tools for sand castle building. There are fancy tools and molds you can buy but the classic sand castle is built using a shovel and pail.

So next time you go to the beach don’t forget your shovel and pail.

S is for shovel and pail set.

 

S is for Surf

Surf: n. a swell at sea that breaks on shore; v. to ride a wave toward the shore on a board.

You can also surf (search) the internet but that doesn’t apply to this post.

How many of you love to watch the waves at the beach or on a coastline? I do, it is pretty relaxing regardless of the size of the waves. A rough weather day can cause some great swells at the beach and for me it is just as fun to watch the angry waves crash as it is to engage my vie on the small cresting of a swell over sandbar.

I don’t surf. I think my dad did. And his brother, my late uncle, surfed. He’s in the Ocean City MD Surfing Hall of Fame. Yay, Uncle Chuck.  My husband has taken surfing instruction. He did really well and got to ride a super wave in Hawaii before diving off the board. It was so fun to watch him.hawaii-e-041

While in Hawaii, my husband and I had the great opportunity to watch a surfing competition. We just came upon it one day as we were just touring around Oahu. It was Van’s World Cup of Surfing November 2012. The perspective of being there to see it live is so different from watching it on TV or on a Facebook video post. The waves were so immense and my adrenaline was in a rush as I watched the surfers tackling their Goliath. It was just amazing and I’ll always remember the experience of viewing a surfing competition in Hawaii in person.

Back to the Lower 48, since I was a kid I’ve experienced watching surfers tackling waves, but much smaller ones. I marvel at the people that have the strength to battle rough swells to catch a wave before the beach is closed due to the storm.  Surfing requires a lot of muscle, balance and stamina.  It takes practice.

If you have a surfing story to share  please comment below.

S is for surf.

S is for Swimming

What a great way to exercise, especially in the summer when you can do it outside: Swimming.

Swimming is a low-impact cardio exercise. You can use all of your major muscles and not feel the strain the next day (although you can over do it).

With Labor Day weeks passed most outdoor pools are closed for the year. Some private condo or apartment pools may still be open and if you live in the deep South or Southwest you’ll be able to enjoy outdoor swimming all year. Otherwise, join a club with an indoor pool and get your hydro therapy.  It’s good for your soul to float around. Spend your floating time contemplating how you can take over the world, or at least conquer a personal issue.  Swimming with friends can be fun, too. There should be opportunities at the community pool for water aerobics and other fund aquatic classes.

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This is a great time to get your little ones some swimming lessons. A whole school year worth of swim lessons could land your child on a swim team. If not, at least he or she will be ready for the following summer.

S is for swimming.