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| Alan Davisson sautés up some insects |
“Does anyone want to eat the
baby cockroach that was inside that other cockroach?” It’s 107 degrees in Zilker Park, but Alan
Davisson has his fryng pans hot and is sautéing insects at the 6th
Annual Bug-Eating Festival. I can’t even
get close enough to see the baby cockroach, much less eat it, because of the
crowd of curious bug-eaters. Alan goes
on to explain to the kids in the group, “All of my heroes are weird. They all changed the world because they did
something weird.” We can all pretty much
agree that Alan is weird.
He redeems himself somewhat
and admits that he doesn’t like to eat cockroaches, because they just taste
like cockroaches. The best insects to
eat, according to Alan, are grubs and larvae, because they don’t have shells
and legs. They are however filled with
dirt, so to properly prepare a grub you have to cut off the head, slit it up
the side and wash it in water to remove all the brown stuff. When cooked up, the fat solidifies and the
grub is more meaty, like bacon. Yumm.
A table behind the throng of
Alan’s on-lookers holds the mealworms he cooked up before moving on to
cockroaches. Some are Cajun-flavored and
some are plain. A sign on the table
warns people with shellfish allergies not to eat them, as shellfish and insects
contain similar allergens. A man
standing beside me apologizes that he has a shellfish allergy and won’t be able
to partake. “Sure you do,” I snark
back. His friend elbows him, “Dude, she
knows you’re lying,” and we all laugh.
But I have come here to eat bugs so I might as well get on with it. Grabbing one of the bigger mealworms I take a
tentative bite. It’s kind of crunchy
with a non-descript flavor, so I pretend it’s a chow mein noodle and finish it
off. I use the same technique with a
wasp larva. Really, they are so small
that a tiny bite is much ado about nothing, once you get past the yuck factor.
Jeffrey Stump contemplates a mealworm
Marjory Wildcraft, who put
this bug-eating event together, checks to see if I’m having a good time. Marjory has been called the “Martha Stewart
of Self-Reliance.” Her business is
teaching people to grow their own food in backyard gardens. I asked her how she got interested in
bug-eating. She explains that there are
certain fats and minerals that are hard to get if a person is really trying to
grow all their nourishment. She noticed
in her own garden that insects were a constant, and annoying, presence, and
thought, “Why don’t I try eating bugs?”
Just one little problem, “They are disgusting.” So she got a few friends together for moral
support, and after three beers to lubricate the system, she was ready to eat
bugs. That was the first Bug-Eating
Festival, and it multiplied from there.
A discerning reader at this
point would be asking, “Why on earth are we talking about eating insects? What’s the point of this insanity?”
Entomophagy, which is Greek
for “eating insects”, has always been common in traditional societies. Beetles and caterpillars are the most popular
food bugs, but over 1900 species have been used for food. Some people think that entomophagy may spread
to developed cultures as populations continue to increase. A recent United Nations report reminds us
that by 2050 there will be 9 billion people on earth. There are only 7 billion of us right now, but
already one billion are chronically hungry.
Turning more forests into farmland for pigs and cattle is problematic,
and ocean fisheries are already in serious decline. Insects are a sustainable source of protein,
and they can be farmed efficiently using less land and less water than mammals,
and are frequently fed with biowaste.
Continuing my tour around the
festival, I tried a chocolate chip cookie made with mealworm flour, which was
fairly tasty, although with enough chocolate almost anything is edible. Getting braver, I tried an ant lion that Alan
had just served up. It was way too
crunchy and got stuck in my teeth.
Seriously I had to rinse my mouth out when I got back to the truck and
spit it out. Mealworms and wasp larvae
might be okay in an emergency, but avoid ant lions. We really need to take better care of those
ocean fisheries.
Sunny Greenblum, age 7, eats a chocolate covered mealworm
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