Eating Insects

Even the UN says you should eat more insects.  And so we did.  My dear farm friend, Allyson, and I went out and captured a jar full of tomato hornworm caterpillars in the garden as well as some grasshoppers (which were much harder to catch, even with nets).  Both of these insects are pests on our crops, so we felt that we were doing a good deed for the garden.

Here they are in the jars.  I put them in the freezer for about an hour so they could die peacefully, then put them in the fridge until we were ready to cook them.

I rinsed them off and lined up all the caterpillars so you can see how pretty they are.

Basically, you just throw them into a skillet/pan with some olive oil and salt and cook them until they plump up and become a stiff straight line.

And then eat them.  Seeing as how they live their lives eating tomato plants, they tasted kind of like fried green tomatoes.  With a hint of corn tortilla.  And the texture of soft shell crab :)

You can see that some of them are kind of deflated.  Apparently if you overcook them, then they kind of explode... but personally, I always think that unless we're talking cookies, it's better to over cook than under cook...

The grasshoppers I cooked the same way, but pulled off the big back legs and the wings first. 

Mostly they were just crispy and tasted kind of like slightly burnt popcorn.

It was quite the insect-eating event!  We had lots of brave people who went back for seconds.  Really, after seeing an animal be killed for food, I don't think eating insects is gross at all.  You should join the party!