Desperate Times...

The success of this post depends on you, loyal readers. In order to get anything out of it, these two things must be true of you:
1) you do not follow National Geographic on twitter (in which case you will already know most of the information in this post, with the exception of the personal info), and
2) you are not squeamish.

There is a famous bug chef. And he looks categorically insane. National Geographic interviewed him and wrote an article in order to promote the re-release of a book that he originally wrote in 1998.

Having nothing more compelling to take up space on my blog, and thinking that someday we might be reduced to eating bugs, I decided to share this information with you.

I actually nearly ordered the book. Until I remembered the recent conversation I had with my Aunt Sherry, who was visiting Northwest Indiana to see Smokey Robinson. I was singing the praises of Morningstar Farms "fakin' bacon," and she asked, "You mean you would rather eat chemicals than pork?"

Yep.

So I thought twice about ordering the bug-eating book. I barely made it to the end of the article.

The crazy-looking bug chef (he intentionally looks crazy! When your book is already crazy enough, why do that to yourself??) contends that because the beef industry uses an unsustainable amount of land and water and produces a disproportionate amount of global warming, eating bugs is the way to go.

Other intel from the bug chef:

• It is dangerous to just start harvesting bugs from your backyard, due to pesticides. Order instead, he says, from a commercial joint that raises bugs for sale (in that case, what's the point, really, but continuing...)
• When harvesting bugs (in a remote location due to the backyard prohibition), use a "1 in 5" rule: only take a bug if there are 5 more around. This way, you lessen your impact on the ecosystem that produces the bugs.
• He doesn't say this one, but he says it's what he does, so I'm telling you to ALWAYS, ALWAYS tell your guests if you are feeding them bugs. He says grinding them up is a good way to help people come to terms with eating bugs.

Some of the recipes mentioned included chex mix with crickets, and waxworm cookies.

I think that on my long journey back to being carnivorous, I am more likely to start with chickens than with grasshoppers.

That having been said, if I am traveling in Mexico and someone offers me chocolate chapulines on a stick, I would say "when in Rome," only because I've never eaten them before.

So I nearly put this crazy man's cookbook on my Amazon wish list. But I didn't. National Geographic hits us with a shameless self-hyperlink that I actually may have blogged about before, a long time ago, but maybe not.

I think I'll stick with the article for now. If you start asking me to add things to my Amazon wish list for Christmastime, then maybe I'll rethink that.

Yeah, probably not.

Bon apetit, loyal readers!