Insectology at Oxbow, Part 4: Insects & Art

One thing that Ox-Bow makes possible is amazing cross-fertilizing. I can't tell you how many of the wonderful insects we've found here have been brought to us by people in the ceramics studio, printmaking, and the kitchen staff too. In kind and in exchange, we seem to have spread our insect meme around to the studios. this started with Jeff Mack's "GlassHopper" in the first week, and has now spread.

I just came to find out that Kyle Ragsdale in the painting studios has been doing a lovely series of paintings (most completed that same day) of us with our nets in hand scrounging around in awe of insects, 

 

Meanwhile, Christa Donner has been doing as series of painted and silk-screened masks that Ox-Bowians have been wearing as part of a photo series of her's....

And then we've taken insects to other art students directly. One of the "Art in the Meadow" classes is for kids, and so we went over to share water bugs, stick insects, and the like:

This, of course, prompted joint efforts between us and the kids to net some nice insects flying around and about...

AY

Insectology at Oxbow, Part 3: Entomophagy!

 

As mentioned in the previous post, eating insects (kown as "entomophagy") was on the agenda for us in the Insectology course at Ox-Bow (and indeed a running theme on this blog).  The savoriness of entomophagy and its  potential contribution to sustainability have been among our interests.

 This last Thursday we took the some 60 or more frozen hoppers we had collected on the meadow for the past week to Eric May, the amazing Ox-Bow head chef and general multi-talent, to cook these guys up chapulines-style as he had eaten them himself in Oaxaca. 

We started by removing the wings (optional) and rinsing out the sand ~

Eric fried the grasshoppers in garlic-infused oil...

 

Then after draining applied his friend's custom habenero salt and a squeeze of fresh line juice - ping!

 And we "jumped" right in (ha-ha) ~

 

They were a hit - so crispy and tasty. Light, a sense of meadow grass-ness and the slight lilt of shrimp.  I only had a second to take this picture as the last three were grabbed up:

 

A culinary treat thanks to the insectologists of Ox-Bow and Eric!

AY