Showing posts with label grasshoppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grasshoppers. Show all posts

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Hopper Tacos

In today's bug hunting trip, I caught enough grasshoppers and crickets to make a meal.



Since hearing that large scale entomophagy has potential as a more environmentally efficient of protein then animal live stock, ive been fascinated with a future with beetle burgers, fly fritters, and peanut butterfly jelly sandwiches.

I decided to cook them chapuline style, a dish common in parts of Mexico. while cooking the crickets I found the process to be kind of diabolical, before reading anymore be warned it may seem kind of nasty.

First I made sure I had all my ingredients



Then I put the crickets in the fridge for an hour, the cold slows their metabolism and makes them sluggish. They are a lot easier to handle this way. The other advantage to this method is it does not kill them. After a cricket dies funk sets in quickly, making them too rotten to eat. Like lobster, it is best to cook them alive. This made sense to me because both species are arthropods.

so into the pot they go



They need to cook in boiling water for one or two minuets, until they turn red


like Lobster. After they are cooked, drain them...


 pull their legs and wings off...

  
and fry them in a sauce pan tablespoon of canola oil on medium heat


I added garlic and lime juice after three minutes and turned it down to a simmer 


When they were done, made them into taco


added the fixings....


and chowed down



 the one that got away


If you have read this far then maybe you are interested in eating insects too. They were tasty, especially in a taco. the bigger grasshoppers I tended to like more because they were meatier. I wish I used more oil to fry them in so they could have been cruncher. It was an overall good eating experience, this experience has taught me that I would love to live in a world of mass entomophagy. I'll probably eat more bugs when I get the chance. If I catch enough next week, I'm going try chocolate covered crickets.



Saturday, August 11, 2012

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  

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Insectology at OxBow, Part 1

And I find myself lucky enough to be here at OxBow, on a lagoon and surrounding by large birch/pine covered dunes on the great Lake Michigan. The assignment: lead an intensive course on insects with a group of eleven wonderful/wanderfilled art students. 
 

Out in dem thar woods on the Crow's Nest trail....

 

peering at a caterpillar that was crawling in the studio lab...


and taking in the translucent green majesty of some sort of silk moth caterpillar that a student in the printmaking lab, Maxx, brought to us. I believe it might be a Polyphemus...


and in the lagoon  some "water scorpions" (Order: Hemiptera) were tooling about....


And here we all are working diligently to collect enough grasshoppers that we might be able to have a meal of them later in the week!


more to follow...

AY

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

snapshots from Montrose Beach

As I am sure you all know, this weekend for our collecting trip we went to Montrose Beach. The weather was beautiful and the insects were visible. Here are a few pictures I took along the way.



They had cut some down some of the taller grass near the docks, so we ended up spending most of our time in the Bird Sanctuary.


There were many grasshoppers. This guy found his way into my net while I was just making my way through some of the taller grass.

A couple of students [myself included] also caught some praying mantis.




Like Isabella, I have decided to keep my little guy as a pet until he passes a month or so from now. He is living in a retired terrarium with plenty of small branches, leaves and of course food (crickets). So far he hasn't been too active– he mostly hangs from the top of the screen.


DiAnna P.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Trip To Chevalier Woods (rain be damned)


Well, brave or fool-hardy I am not sure, but a set of us went out this past rainy and cold Sunday to make the most of a chance to collect insects. It started out wet, but cleared up - for some moments even spots of sun!



Julia wasn't shy about taking a hatchet to this rotting to tree to see what we might find

While the nets were useful for Emily and Ana to nab fast flyers like hover flies..



Some classic Orthopterans could be found hanging around,


While praying mantises, though tough as ever to find, also made some appearances!  A not uncommon occurrence out at Chevalier Woods ~



Little juveniles of a certain bug in a milkweed pod....


As well as some non-arthropod friends too. Snakes, field mice and a few other Friends Of the Forest were about. (This guy gave us permission to take his photo, so no copyright or in..formed consent issues here...)


AY

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Orthopterans, and More Orthopterans

This past week in the Insect World found us dissecting grasshoppers (sometimes known as "Louisiana Lubbers" of the genus Romalea). Here we have them rinsing pre-event...



 
 And once you carefully pull the one apart, you can see details like tracheal tubes that let the insect
breathe ( alas, no need for lungs! )


 This configuration, post dissection, made me think of the National Geographic image from their 

OK, enough about hoppers, time I better hop along myself...

AY

Thursday, October 7, 2010

New insects discovered!

A team of scientists were doing their thing up in an isolated mountain range in Papua New Guinea and discovered new mammals, plants, and insects. Here are some notable ones:

Katydids!




(this guy uses his spiny legs for defense by raising them up in the air)

Ants!




...and apparently Shrek!


More images and lists of the discoveries can be found HERE
-Emily