Eating Insects

The weather on the plains made a short gathering this weekend. It dropped about 3-4 inches of wet fluffy snow overnight. All was not lost, we still had a hardy sampling of roasted crickets and mealworm larvae. (Pictured are the leftovers...plenty of drumsticks to go 'round.) Not as bad as my prejudiced Western mind had anticipated. They sort of "melt in your mouth, not in your hands." Except for the crickets long hairlike ovipositor that sticks out of the females abdomen (used to deposit eggs into soil or plant stems). That tasty morsel tends to get stuck between the teeth, or lodged in your throat, inciting the gag reflex...lol. Eating insects is part of the everyday diet in some parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Native Americans in the US feasted on roasted grasshoppers and were known to eat about 60 different varieties of insects. In Zaire, the mopanie worm is known as the "snack that crawls"...mmmm. There are about 1,462 recorded edible insects. Nutrition-wise, insects tend to rival fish and beef for protein, vitamins, and calories. All in all, knowing these facts did not curb my imagination when taking the first bites. All I could think of was an episode of "Man versus Wild", where Bear bites into a grub the size of your thumb - and guts and juice go spurting and run down his chin...>gag<.