On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 10:42:07 -0500, jmcquown >
wrote:

>On 1/27/2013 10:19 AM, Janet Bostwick wrote:
>> On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:51:43 -0000, "Ophelia"
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> My family were great bakers and made wonderful bread, cakes, scones and
>>> pastries every week.
>>>
>>> A couple of my favourites which I still sometimes make today:
>>> snip
>>> What were your favourites? Not necessarily sweet thing btw!
>>>
>> I loved fried smelt. Great Lakes smelt are smaller than ocean smelt.
>> My BIL would catch them by the bushel-basket full in Lake Michigan. I
>> can't remember the time of year or what else we had with them. I
>> think we had sour cream cucumbers, but what I remember is this truly
>> heaping platter of fried smelt. (Heaped high enough that some would
>> always slide off) They were all golden and crusty. Mom fried them in
>> her big 'spider.' (I don't know why, but spider is/was a common term
>> for the big, black, cast iron skillet.)
>(snipped)
>> Janet US
>>
>If it had "legs" it was a spider
>
>http://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-CAST...-/251024528288

Maybe, but my mother and all her friends called it a spider. Recently,
I saw a Paula Deen show and she called her cast iron skillet a spider.
I can understand where the campfire version initially got the name.
Maybe the name just transferred when folks no longer had to cook over
an open fire.
Janet US