Waiter, there's a fly in my soup...Oh.

Click here for the article

So I'm drinking coffee and reading magazines the other morning, when what to my surprise I come across an article that actually ties in to the ridiculousness of my family. A couple of years ago I blogged about eating bugs in South Korea with my brothers, but treated the experience as the novelty I thought it was from a Western perspective. (Sidebar: Silkworm larvae taste EXACTLY as you'd imagine they'd taste and just as good as they look.)


But the June 9th issue of Time went a little further into the world of bug-munching and oddly, it TOO has a family twist.

See, one of the guys the article talks about, David Gracer, was a chef at the Broad Appetit Food Festival in Richmand VA in May and he's the owner of a company called Sunrise Land Shrimp . The "family" connection is that he was the former tenant of the apartment my sister, Keri, now rents in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Somehow, through her gregariousness or butt-in-ski-ness, Keri has become good friends with Gracer and has, through her alter-ego, Dolly B, become a supplier to his bug-recipe canon.

She's created what she calls a "Sour Buguette" using traditional sourdough ingredients with a crunchy/nutty cricket-meal roulade.


Yummy! I don't know how well this recipe will do on the shelves of Safeway (though it is an interesting twist on the concept of "Whole Foods"), but from a marketing perspective, I think she should call it Jiminy Bread. Then only Pinocchio fans will know what they're savoring.

Gotta have Buguette? Just give a little whistle...

...and always let your conscience be your guide

And now a word from Dolly B herself:

-----Addendum from Keri Marion, Rhode Island -----

Actually, waiter, there's some soup in my flies....

This hack-into-my-brother's-blog entry is in reference /response to his early-morning discovery via Time Magazine of my friend David Gracer at the entomophagist "cook-off" in Richmond, VA last month.


You can find the full article here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810336,00.html



As Thompson mentioned, David and his lovely family used to live in my apartment about 2 years before we did. I heard about David through the tenant directly before us. "You know about the history of this place?" inquired Michael, the former tenant. "This guy named Dave - he's a bug-eater. He had a freezer full of bugs to eat right here!" and he opened the door to the hallway; Justin & I both peeked over the edge of the door, peering into what - at one time - was the home to thousands of dead bugs. In a freezer. Waiting to be eaten. By people. "He's a bit of a local legend. A professor."

Admittedly, I was curious about the Professer / Entomophagist. Having become somewhat of a "foodie" myself, investing my time into the environmental aspects of eating locally and seasonally sans barcode, I would run across electronic David often in other blogs and in the hundreds of events I should have gone to but missed by a day or two. In some circles it would be considered e-stalking, except I wasn't intentionally looking for David, I just kept finding him.

I did end up on his blog once and left him a note. I didn't hear back from him, so I was willing to let it go, but then some important-looking mail came and I thought I should offer to forward it to him. I called and we had a long conversation about the environmental impact of meat production (if you want to talk more about that, just e-mail me), specifically beef and the benefits of substituting bugs for meat not only or the benefit of our bodies but for benefit of our lovel planet. But even more exciting (and more immediately attainable), he told me that he was beginning to mill bugs into flour. Our new-found friendship was born.

Our friend John was visiting from Monterey when we had David over for the first time. The four of us ate a bunch of bugs and washed them down with some euphoric refreshments. He told us that he was heading to Richmond for the cook-off and would I like to make him some bug breads for the gig. Sure thing!

His foods along with my bread took first place that day.

Since then I have been experimenting to make bigger, more consistent and more beautiful loaves. My goal in this whole thing is to help David make his idea more palatable. Bugs are tasty. Bugs are nutritious (assuming they're farmed or found in areas without urbanization /pollution /pesticide use). But more than all of that, they could help reduce the carbon footprint of America considerably if we allow them.