by Richard "Bugman" Fagerlund
Daily Lobo Columnist
Cockroaches are often thought to carry a lot of diseases. This is not true as cockroaches are actually very clean insects. Not only do they not carry diseases and are not a health threat, they are actually quite edible. Got the munchies? The store is too far away to get a bag of Doritos? Need a quick snack after smoking some good pot? Try Cockroach ala King.
The sauce requires:
Two cups of milk
Three tablespoons of butter
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Four tablespoons of all purpose unbleached flour
One cup of vegetable broth
The main dish requires:
36 frozen American cockroaches, thawed (these are the large reddish-brown roaches that fly).
One cup sliced mushrooms
One green pepper, sliced
One cup cooking sherry
One pimiento, cut into small strips
Salt and pepper to taste
Two egg yolks
1. To make the sauce, in a saucepan, heat milk and 1 tablespoon of butter until butter is melted. Then add the flour, combining the ingredients with a wire whisk. Continue whisking until the sauce starts to thicken, then add the vegetable broth. Stir slowly until the sauce is thick and smooth.
2. SautÇ the cockroaches, mushrooms and green pepper in two tablespoons of butter until the vegetables are tender (two to three minutes), then add the sauce.
3. Gradually stir in the sherry. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Add pimiento and simmer until all ingredients are evenly heated.
5. Shortly before serving, heat the egg yolks and mix a tablespoon of warm water. Add the egg yolks to the sautÇ. Cook for an additional minute over.
6. Serve on a bed of egg noodles, boiled and drained, or on whole wheat toast. Cover with sauce.
Do you have a problem with those big, ugly green hornworms on your tomato plants? Not to worry, they are perfectly edible also. You need:
Three tablespoons olive oil
16 green tomato hornworms
Four medium green tomatoes, sliced into rounds
Salt and pepper to taste
White cornmeal
1. In a large skillet or wok, heat the oil. Then lightly fry the hornworms, about 4 minutes, taking care not to rupture the cuticles on each side of the insect under high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside
.2. Season tomato rounds with salt and pepper, then coat with cornmeal on both sides.
3. In a large skillet, fry tomatoes until lightly browned on both sides.
4. Top each round with two fried tomato hornworms
5. Garnish the paired hornworms with a single basil leaf.
Cockroaches too nasty? Tomato hornworms to yucky? Then try centipede drumsticks. This recipe requires:
Four very large frozen centipedes, thawed.
One tablespoon of canola, vegetable, corn or safflower oil
One tablespoon soy sauce
One tablespoon brown sugar
One tablespoon garlic powder
Two tablespoons grated ginger root
1. In a small bowl, mix together the oil, soy sauce, brown sugar and garlic powder. Add the grated ginger and blend thoroughly.
2. Set centipedes on the lightly oil rack of a broiling pan. Brush centipedes with the glaze, then broil them three to four inches from the heat source for three minutes. Remove from the heat, turn centipedes and brush them with glaze again. Broil for another three minutes and serve.
All of these recipes are real and are from The Eat-A- Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon and published by Ten Speed Press. There are many more great recipes in this book.
You can cook and eat ants, tarantulas, scorpions, katydids, termites and a host of other bugs. Bugs are high in protein and low in fat. They are probably much better for you than eating pigs and cows and they are much cheaper to obtain. You can find most of the ingredients to the meals in your backyard or running around your house.
If you don't want to eat bugs for their nutritional value, you can consume some to get a buzz.
In California, American Indians would place 50 or 60 live harvester ants (those are the big ants that sting) in some eagle down and then swallow them alive. The ants, when they reached the stomach, would all sting at once, causing the user to go into a catatonic state and have wild dreams. When they came out of it, they would barf up the ants, still alive and repeat the process with a new batch of ants.
After two or three times of having several dozen ants sting your stomach lining you become comatose for a short while and have very vivid dreams, or so I was told.
Although the last anecdote is true, please do not eat harvester ants to get a buzz. It can be very dangerous and if the government finds out they will make ants a controlled substance and outlaw their possession, making it hard for us entomologists to collect specimens.
Have I tried the recipes I just wrote about? No, I am a vegetarian and don't eat meat.
If you have a problem with bugs, e-mail me at fagerlun@unm.edu. If I can't control them, I will bring along a cookbook.
