the bug eater's handbookamerican+bug...the american bug eater’s handbook 6 take no thought of...

The Bug Eater's Handbook

by Allen “Alio” Davisson

Allergy warning: If you are allergic to shrimp, dust, or chocolate, you may be allergic to

insects.

Insects are arthropods just as are shrimp, crabs, and lobsters. They all have six or eight

jointed legs and exoskeletons that are made of chitin.

Eating insects may cause severe allergic reactions in some people and even be life

threatening in rare cases where severe chitin allergies exist.

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................4

Chapter 1 What do bugs taste like? ..................................................................................................7

Chapter 2 Are there bugs that are bad to eat? ................................................................................10

1. Allergies .......................................................................................................................... 10

2. Parasites and Germs .........................................................................................................11

3. It Ate Toxic Plants ........................................................................................................... 12

4. It Stings ........................................................................................................................... 13

5. Gross! .............................................................................................................................. 13

6. Palatable, but… ............................................................................................................... 14

Chapter 3 What bugs can I eat? .....................................................................................................16

Wasps .................................................................................................................................. 16

Grasshoppers ....................................................................................................................... 19

Crickets ............................................................................................................................... 21

Grubs and Beetles ............................................................................................................... 22

Adult Beetles- ..................................................................................................................... 25

Ants and Termites ............................................................................................................... 25

Caterpillars, Moths, and Butterflies .................................................................................... 26

Bees ..................................................................................................................................... 28

Stink Bugs ........................................................................................................................... 29

Spiders................................................................................................................................. 29

Scorpions............................................................................................................................. 30

Flies ..................................................................................................................................... 31

Miscellaneous ..................................................................................................................... 33

Chapter 4 Farming Insects .............................................................................................................34

Farming Crickets ................................................................................................................. 34

Farming Mealworms ........................................................................................................... 36

In Closing .......................................................................................................................................38

Additional Resources .....................................................................................................................39

About the Author............................................................................................................................40

Index ..............................................................................................................................................41

The American Bug Eater’s Handbook 4

Introduction

Entomophagy is the ancient and widespread practice of eating insects. Since we also eat

some arachnids, the spiders and scorpions, perhaps we should be called arachnaentomophagists.

When my daughter Lily Ray and I first saw Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating

Insects, the beautiful photo essay book by Peter Menzel, and became curious about eating bugs,

we split a cricket cooked in butter and sort of liked it. Maybe it was just the oddity of it all, but

we wanted to know more. I found books with great pictures, very beautiful pictures indeed and

with fascinating information about other countries using bugs for food. Candy and spicy bugs

were in sold in some American stores as a joke. I found cookbooks with some pretty fancy

recipes and beautiful photos of the prepared dishes. I found long lists of thousands of edible

bug's scientific names that I hope I'll never need to pronounce or memorize. There was a lot of

scattered information here and there, but it seemed there was no book that had the simple

specifics I wanted to learn without needing to scour multiple sources. I did not want to spend my

life researching. All I wanted was one book, an insect eater’s guide, that could teach me to eat

bugs from where I live as a serious source of food—because insects are very high quality meat.

Insect meat is very much like a shrimp or crab but with more omega-3 fatty oily stuff. The

chemical composition of related species may vary as it often depends on the plant they eat, so the

nutritional value is location specific. However, some generalizations can be made. The protein

content is comparable to conventional meat. The fiber content (chitin from the exoskeleton) is

higher than in conventional meat and similar to that of cereal grains. All food insects are a

significant source of short-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, a good source of iron, calcium and

vitamin B complex. In general as a food group, insects are nutritious, rich in protein and fat,

providing ample quantities of minerals and vitamins. The amino-acid composition is in most

cases better than that of grains and legumes.

Your new word for the day:

arachnaentomophagist.

That's the hard way to say “bug eater.”


As time went on, we kept on experimenting and researching.

We began holding a yearly pot-luck get together in June. We

called it the June Bug Fest, where friends and the curious could

get a glimpse of the world of eating bugs. The questions that

newcomers asked were always the same as mine had been in the

beginning.

The answer to whether there was a book that can be used as a

guide was, “No. Not really.” I had found no such book that gave

readers the “go get the meat” information that would simply and

quickly open up this world for them. Over and over it was

suggested that I write such a book and so here it is. I have tried

to write it in a language so that most readers can get what I got

without having to do what I did.

As the writing of the book was progressing and as I

continued to discover greater and greater potential in the use of

insects as food, I began to get the impact of the reality that we

right now have an unlimited high quality meat supply readily

abundant for every human on the planet. The impact was

staggering when I mentally followed the path to the vision of a

nearly limitless but untapped, low-tech, simple, inexpensive, and reproducible food source that is

potentially available right now.

I also realized that the guide can never be complete because of the vast number of discoveries

that I continue to make and because of the developments that are happening at lightning speed in

the realm of insect food production and market development.

I tried to focus on the most important questions, covering broad sweeps of information so

that you may get about the business of chomping on bugs with a minimum of research and begin

today, rubber on the road, eating bugs.

I hope you will find this book to be fun and inspiring, but above all, I want to break down the

walls in our thinking that keep us from exploring whole new ways of living as a human beings

on planet Earth. The old ways are not working well at all and it will take brave new souls who

are, like all of my heroes, happy to be called “weird” in order to clear the paths into an entirely

different future than the one currently projected for us. I call it “The New Paradigm” and in this

emerging world, there is perhaps not a pile of luxury, but there is abundance. Perhaps not

luxurious comforts, but innovative and different ways to create and share new ones.

In the new paradigm, perhaps we can experience the fearless freedom that I heard of in

church as a child when they read to me words that went something like this:

Common Questions

about Eating Bugs

∙ What do they taste like?

∙ What bugs can you eat?

∙ Can you eat them raw?

∙ Are there bugs that are

poisonous to eat?

∙ What is the nutritional

value?

∙ How can you get

enough to really make a

difference?

∙ How do you catch

them?

∙ Is there a book I can get

to use as a guide?


Take no thought of what you will eat or what you will wear but trust your creator

to provide these things for you. Look at the birds of the field, they don't work or

farm but the mystery of creation somehow feeds them and they are more beautiful

than King Solomon in all of his glory.

It is a far stretch for most folks to even consider, “taking no thought of what you will eat,”

but when I look at the birds, they are all eating bugs. The fish are eating them, too, along with the

cats, dogs, frogs, turtles, snakes, bears, monkeys, and lizards. In fact it's hard to find an animal

and even some plants that don't use bugs for food. So who are the weird ones? The ones who eat

insects or the ones who won't?

Bugs are usually not the whole of an animal’s diet but a very important part. Through the

millennia, in most places at some time, bugs have been a very important, even if small, part of

the human or animal diet. It is a documented and proven fact: animals that are kept on a near

starvation diet of high quality food live the longest, move about more, are the happiest, and

overall the healthiest. Most living creatures (other than we humans, increasingly obese, sick,

slow, and unhappy) are living on a near starvation diet of high quality, natural food. Humans

have used bugs as food since our beginnings.

When the tomato was first discovered it was shunned because of a belief that it was

poisonous. Same with potatoes. You couldn't pay people to eat them. Now it's time for bugs to

move mainstream. The momentum is fast on the increase. We're looking through the keyhole of a

door that opens to vast, unexplored areas of existing and potential supply.

The movement toward self-reliance (freedom) is growing rapidly. Storable foods, seeds,

gardening, raising animals, making good water, and knowing your native wild edibles is

becoming more and more attractive to many who want to be prepared to make it happily through

any type of social upset or natural disaster. Man does not live by bread alone, nor by bugs alone,

but bugs have since the beginning been and will again become an important part of the human

diet.

Welcome to Earth. The natural life here works well. Everything eats bugs. If you haven't tried

it yet, whether for fun, for life, for profit, nutrition, or just raw experience, this little guidebook

will be a quick means to fly you across the ocean of misunderstanding and misinformation, and

get you well on the way to becoming involved in this swelling movement.

Bonn appetite!

-Alio


Chapter 1

What do bugs taste like?

The taste can vary widely and depends on many diverse factors. That is, unless you have a

batch of bugs of the same species, same age, harvested from the same plant cluster at the same

time, with the same history, and if you haven't changed the flavor with cooking, they are going to

be different. Because of the many things that can determine the taste, you can almost say that no

two bugs taste alike.

First of all, what did they eat? Flavor will change according to what they ate. It gets built into

their bodies. “You are what you eat.” So are they. Some taste horrible because they ate foul

tasting plants. We'll cover this later in the section on toxic bugs.

Some recommend purging out the insect's digestive tract by keeping them in a container

overnight where they can have one last good bowel movement. I sometimes have used a paper

bag or large plastic jar with crumpled up paper towels or newspaper inside to give bugs spaces to

hide so they don’t pile up, freak out, and kill each other so much. Purging will get out some of

the innards of some of them to a degree. However, I have never seen enough droppings, and it's

not logical, to suggest this purge is getting rid of everything.

If a bug’s digestive tract is at all like mine, they will have something left in there until they

eat again and have more pushing through the tract causing them to have to “go.” There's always

digesting food in there moving down from the top. This purging treatment is more to ease the

mind of the beginner, especially in the “civilized” cultures. I've gotten over most of my

disinformation Western-culture programming, but I will still pull the head off of a larger, unlucky

raw grasshopper just because of the thought. (When I eat oysters, I don’t even think about it.)

You might say it's all in your head. Older cultures get a real good laugh watching us frown at

scary food. Purging is not necessary, though.

Some say that those cooked innards are so much a part of the whole taste that they should

never be purged out. Even if you could get it all out, the flavors of the foods they ate are built in.

If they fed on peppermint, that is the essence that gets imparted. Tomato-plant worms taste like

tomatoes and honeybee larvae are made of sweet, nutty protein. Dung beetles are listed edible

and guess what they taste like. That’s right. They taste like s*%#!

The age of the insect changes its flavor. The larval, or “worm” stage of a bug is different than

the adults. When they change from larvae to the pupae, or “cocoon” stage, the taste changes

again and then again as they move through each phase. A wasp nest will have all stages of


growth and change going on and there are several different flavors in there to be plucked out of

their nursery chambers.

When an insect enters puberty and discovers the joy of sex, their hormones kick in and they

ooze sexy-smelling pheromones to help them get a date. Humans wash off and cover these

smells on themselves. We call it BO and consider the whole business of sniffing the opposite sex

dangerous. Some, mostly the “civilized,” say that bugs should always be washed thoroughly lest

you might eat an impurity. Others say that washing them removes these scents and that the scent

is a big part of the good flavor. I eat them unwashed because I am lazy.

The stages of growth also affect the texture. Tender insects cooked in the larval stage are

similar to bacon fat well cooked, very desirable. An old, large grasshopper can be very scratchy

and leave parts stuck in your teeth like popcorn hulls that can irritate until floss gets it out. Some

types of bugs go through many molt stages, shedding their outer skeleton shell as their inner

body gets bigger. The size of some bugs, hoppers for example, isn't really a good measure of how

tender they will be. A hopper in a third nymph stage that just molted today can be very tender

until the new coat hardens. When it does harden, a hopper of the same size will be scratchy.

I've mentioned several unpleasant taste experiences. Now let me get to the good stuff. Most

of the larvae taste very much like a fine nut with much oil and rich protein, leaving your brain

triggered to seek out more. I harvested acorns to make acorn flour and the little worms in the

“infected” acorns tasted like the finest pecan. When I cook up crickets at a demo, not my favorite

by themselves, I add a bit of Cajun sauce and people love them. The mealworms from the pet

store are rich and nutty raw, deliciously nutty stirred up on a hot-oiled skillet, but add the Cajun

and step back before the pushing and grabbing gets started. Delectable!

At one of our demos, with an unusually uptight and suspicious crowd attending (my

neighborhood association), the group participation was low, low, low. The fried-up bugs by

themselves were left for me and the kids—no grown-up takers. The older, more sensible ones

made a bit of mockery out of it and turned down the treats all the way, except for maybe two or

three adults out of the thirty there. They mostly just joked and “no wayed” at me and the kids.

But look at what happened! For the regular potluck, which the fearful, hungry adult jokers

seemed more interested in, I had placed a dish on the table, too. It was a rich, buttery, white,

creamy Alfredo dish which was layered across the top with crickets—hundreds of crickets.

Crickets were a half-inch deep, solid wall-to-wall, crispy baked. While I was cleaning up my

demo table, getting ready to join in at the end of the food line, I was shocked. The cricket

Alfredo was gone. They nailed it as if they hadn't eaten in a week! Go figure. Visual eaters.

The point I'm making is that preparation and presentation affects a person's opinion about

whether or not something tastes good.

Each individual's personal taste throws in another unpredictable factor as to which bugs taste

good or bad. Don't be upset if someone doesn't love your grub burgers. There's always someone


who doesn't like the taste of a certain bug, while another fellow will love that one but hate the

one the first guy loves.

There are 8,000 species of grasshopper that might all be a bit different There are 8,000

opinions about how each one tastes, too. To each her own.


Chapter 2

Are there bugs that are bad to eat?

There are several ways that a bug can be bad to eat. Some ways are worse than others. The

wrong bugs might kill you if you're stranded, eat a bunch of raw bugs, and get real unlucky.

Some bugs under certain conditions just taste so darn bad you won't grab a second bite. So here

are six groups of “bad” bugs with varying degrees of badness about them.

1. Allergies

Bugs that could maybe quickly kill you

The allergy issue is one that must always be first when introducing friends and newcomers to

the world of eating bugs. People who know they have certain allergies can avoid those foods, but

not many people associate insects with the same allergic reaction. So in parts of the world where

bug eating is new, the fact that shrimp, dust, or chocolate allergies are similar to insect allergies

must be talked about often. As the use of bug foods increases, we will see some bug allergy

warnings alongside the food package's warnings about peanut, soy, and milk allergies. So until

then, when everybody knows it, say this three times, memorize it, and spread the word.

If you are allergic to shrimp, dust, or chocolate, you may be allergic to insects.



There. You've been warned. Always remember to warn your friends if you want to keep them

for a long time!


2. Parasites and Germs

Bugs that can slowly kill you if you're not careful

Cook your bugs to kill possible parasites and bacteria. If

you must eat insects raw while stranded without food or if you

choose to snack on insects raw in nature, there can be some

risks to be aware of. June bugs for instance, are known to

possibly carry a worm egg in their belly that can get really

disgusting if it hatches out in yours. It gets really, really big.

Many bugs, and the June bug beetle is one, begin life as a

grub worm or some other underground larva that burrows

through the soil, filling its gut with whatever rich mud or juicy

stuff it can find. Therefore, it could possibly pick up some

kind of nasty little hitchhiker along the way. Insects aren't so

special though. One fellow I read about, survived a

Vietnamese prison camp, escaped and crawled through the

jungle with two broken arms and survived by eating snails.

After returning to civilization, a parasite from the snails killed

him.

Shrimp, pork, and many, many other foods crop up at

times carrying parasitic worms or bacteria. So when we eat

bugs, and are concerned with parasites, apply the same rule

that you use to safely eat bacon or eggs. Cook it.

E. coli, listeria, salmonella, cysts, and all sorts of tiny,

germy things are also present in almost any rich soil. Different people seem to have varying

reactions to the soilborne bacterial “bugs.” One person whose body has developed a tolerance to

some forms of bacteria, who has had lifelong exposures to those types, might not be bothered

much by a digestive tract infection. While another person, who has had little exposure to those

same bacteria, or someone with a weakened immune system could get sick or even die in a

worst-case scenario.

They say ants, termites, their eggs and larvae are safe to eat raw. As for myself, I will eat a

wasp or bee larva raw from the hive or nest breeding chamber without much worry about a

soilborne parasite or bacteria. I'll nab a little green grasshopper in the garden if it looks fresh and

tender after a second or third molt. I'll pop a raw mealworm from the pet store that was raised on

bran, but I won't pop one raw from under a log. I made up my own guidelines based on my

immunities and some common sense but keep in mind that I also eat fruit off the ground, have

The 6 Degrees of

Bad Bugs

1st Allergies: Bugs that

could maybe quickly

kill you

2nd Parasites and Germs:

Bugs that can slowly

kill you if you're not

careful

3rd Toxic Plant Eaters:

Bugs that might get

you a bellyache

4th It Stings: Bugs with

sharp parts to watch

out for

5th Palatable, but you

wouldn't feed to

your mother

6th Bugs that are just so

nasty that you'll

never get past it

unless you’re

starving.


worked for years with composts, manures, and soils, changed a lot of diapers, fixed septic

pumps, and I even got kissed in the mouth by a few dogs on accident. I've kissed a few pretty

girls on the mouth, too. Life's full of risks. I very well could have some kind of parasite or

bacteria in my body; hopefully not the big worm.

I draw the line at the ground level. Burrowers: cook them. Top dwellers: that's up to you. Just

be sure they didn't begin life eating dirt.

So to conclude about parasites and bacteria, just for the record and as the “cover my ass”

clause, don't do as I do. Do as I say. Cook your bugs.

3. It Ate Toxic Plants

Bugs that might get you a bellyache

Many insects feed on plants containing chemicals that make them very bad tasting or mildly

poisonous to eat. This works well for discouraging predators, including you. Bugs taste like what

they were raised on.

The larvae of the long-winged butterflies (yes,

they've got longer, thinner wings) feed on plants with

juices that are toxic and do not settle well in your belly.

The monarch caterpillar has the bitter alkaloids of the

milkweed they eat. Inchworms from oak trees have the

astringent, bitter tannic acids from the oak leaves,

while the same type of worm might taste great coming

off of a peppermint leaf or oregano plant.

Some insects may even contain carcinogenic

compounds, but most of the bugs you will find and recognize fall within the vast groups that are

safe to eat. There are varying numbers of bugs listed as edible depending on whose list it is.

Some sources list 1,500 to 3,000 tried and tested species, but others go into much higher

projections in the tens of thousands.

There are estimated to be between six to ten million species of insects. That's quite a spread,

six to ten. It shows how little we really know about insects. Only a tiny fraction have been

officially tested and listed in the civilized world. We can guess that there are perhaps millions

upon millions of species that have been safely eaten at some time or another.


4. It Stings

Bugs with sharp parts

The venom in a bee, wasp, scorpion, or spider is destroyed with cooking, but the stinger itself

can still be sharp. Even people who are allergic to bee or wasp stings can eat them if they are

cooked, however the stinger can make a little sticking sensation if it gets chewed in just the

perfectly wrong way. I would just call this unlucky because I have eaten hundreds if not

thousands of cooked wasps, bees, and scorpions, and only once remember getting a stinging

sensation. It is not much like a sting though. It is more as if a thistle pricker got into your mouth

and poked you. Most often the stiff stinger of the scorpion is cut off before serving, while bee’s

stingers don't seem to have much stiffness left to them after cooking.

There are some other stickly parts, too. The chitin exoskeletons of mature adult insects can

have some pretty sharp and barbaric looking spikes, hooks, claws, and protective shields that are

very tough and impossible, or at best very scratchy, to swallow. This is one reason that most

insects are eaten in the larval stage. That's right. The worms are the most popular.

You can cook off the prickly parts directly over a flame. Most often, people remove the

scratchy bits either before or after cooking. I usually pluck them after cooking when they are

easier to take off. Sometimes it turns out that if they are cooked up a bit more, a scratchy bug

will get crispy and tender enough to chew and the picking off of legs and such can be skipped.

I have had some big, old, late-season red wasps that seemed to be all skeleton and no meat.

Those I just tear off the wings and legs, chew and chew and chew to get all the good stuff, then

spit out the plasticky chitin after the flavor is gone. Old adult, spiky-scratchy bugs are maybe not

my favorite food, but they'll do in a pinch.

5. Gross!

Bugs that are just so nasty you'll never get past it

I saw cockroaches on one of the edible lists. Now, there are

many species of cockroaches and I'm sure some of them might

taste great. Some of them are lacy green or light tan looking with transparent wings. They live in

the crispy clean wild and feed in nature's cleaner deli sections. Other roaches, like the German

roach, live in the food pantry and stink like sour socks with a twist of puke. If you've ever lived

in the southern U.S. you're probably familiar with the “tree roach,” sometimes called the “water


bug.” They can get up to about 3-inches long and they stink just like the German “cupboard”

roach.

A kid brought one to a Bug Fest potluck and dared me to cook and eat it. It must be alright if

it's on the list. Right? Wrong. I thought I'd surprise the crowd, cook it and eat it no problem. But

there was a problem. I bit half of it off it and chewed it up. It tasted just like they smell— like

dirty socks—and I sprayed it out the door just before the gagging started.

Stink bugs also were listed as edible. So I put them all over a pizza and promptly ruined it.

They rendered it totally nonedible for me. They tasted a little better fried by themselves and

some of the kids really liked them that way. So I'd say stink bugs may be upgraded to the next

category “Palatable but…” when they are not on my pizza.

Everyone has their own level of acceptable and unacceptable when it comes to bugs. Some

will never get past the first one. Others sneak them off the plate.

6. Palatable, but…

Bugs you might eat yourself, but wouldn't feed to your mother

This is a pretty large category. There are some insects, particularly those prepared in their

larval stage, that can be flavored up to be absolutely delicious, but lots of insects just taste like

bugs.

Some of those stickly adults are in this group, too, and also some of the bugs that taste weird

from eating weird-tasting plants.

This isn't such a problem if a person is really hungry. Some bugs taste pretty OK after you've

gone a day or two without food. They surprisingly upgrade from the “Wouldn't touch them with a

10-foot pole” column into the more palatable “I can eat 'em if I have to” list.

My general advice to a beginner is:

Learn the groups that are safe and tasty.

Cook them.

Eat them.


Chapter 3

What bugs can I eat?

OK. Let's focus now on getting some meat on the table. Remember that many insects in the

wild serve very important roles and should not be harvested except for the educational

experience or out of food necessity. For instance, wasps eat mosquitoes. If you eat all the wasps,

you may be eating mosquitoes soon. (Yes, they and their larvae can be strained from water by the

millions.) If we were to eat all the honeybees, pretty soon none of us would be eating much at all.

If I find a rare tarantula in our area, I let it go on to reproduce. Use some thoughtful common

sense but don't let anything keep you from the adventure. It's all about balance. After all,

everything eats a few bugs. You'll eat a couple of kilos during your life as a free bonus included

in your groceries without even knowing it.

Wasps

I list wasps first because at the right season, during larvae

and pupae development, they are one of the fastest ways to get

your hands on a substantial amount of meat. The quality of the

meat is very good. I would serve the larvae and pupae to my

mother. There are about 75,000 species to choose from. Some are

really small and hide away. Some live in the ground and live

alone, so you wouldn't get much food by digging one up.

But the ones we're most interested in, are the hanging, papery

nests of the paper wasps (yellow jackets), red wasps, brown wasps… Whatever color wasps that

build into a large colony on a single, removable nest. You will be amazed at the amount of food

inside the nurseries of a captured nest.

They have their season. At the beginning of the spring (in Texas) the nest is beginning with

just a single queen. Then, as she continues to build chambers for kids, the nest grows. Toward the

middle of summer and heading into fall, the nest will have grown much larger. When you open

the pupating chambers that have been closed off with a thin paper cover, you’ll find the various

stages of growth. Nearer the edges will be a lot of new chambers with a single egg in some, a


new larva in others. Toward the center where the queen began her work, there are bigger larvae,

then young pupae, older pupae, young adults, and a few that are about to emerge.

It is a very amazing thing to lay out in a line on a piece of paper, the stages from egg, larvae,

aging larvae, young to old pupae and those ready to walk. (I say ready to walk because when

they first emerge, they aren't really ready to fly, and I've never been attacked or stung by a

unhatched adult.)

Capturing the Nest

If the thought of zeroing in on a large nest of yellow jackets armed only with a jar and a lid

scares you pretty bad, that's perfectly OK. Me, too. Welcome to the human condition. But food-

getting has forever and often been a risky business in one way or another.

It seems to be more do-able though than I expected. Protective covering might be smart, but

I've never taken the time to be smart enough to do that. If you are very sensitive to stings though,

wear the clothes and goggles. It always surprises me that with all the many, many nests I have

captured in a jar, and considering how many adults were captured with the nests, there has been

so little stinging going on. Lots of attacks, but not that many hits. And the stinging that does

occasionally happen seems to be just slight and without much punch to them. When I see videos

of animals getting into a hive or wasp nest and putting up with multiple stings to the face before

backing out, it makes me feel pretty wimpy if I can't handle an occasional itty-bitty sting in order

to bring home some food. Those animals never back out without some food!

When the wasps are cooler, they are slower. I've gotten them at night because of this, but it

won't matter anyway if you are dressed right. If you use a flashlight or headlamp, an occasional

wasp may fly at the light. Headlamps can get risky because of this.

Overhead nests on wood under the eaves are the easiest to get, and that's where you see most

nests. A very long jar with a lid that fits quickly and easily into place works well. The longer the

jar, the better it is because the broken off nest will fall to the bottom of the jar and most of the

adults will go down to it, staying there to handle the emergency in the nursery. This gives you a

chance to slip the lid in place without many escapees. Most of the escapees just fly off. This is

when I usually run. I've got the lid in place and I'm out of there till things settle down.

For higher nests, tape the jar (use plastic for this high up stuff) onto the end of a bamboo or

other long stick, push it up over the nest, sealing it off, then carefully push sideways to break the

nest-attaching stem and it will fall in the jar. The adults will go to the bottom, too, to check on

the babies. That's a good thing. Then holding the container up high, promptly move to a safer

area to carefully lay it down. Sneak up and watch for the perfect moment to snap on the lid. A

pitcher with a hinged lid that can be quickly flipped closed works well, but the mouth of the

pitcher needs to be one that will lie flat against the wood above. The lid must be not be

troublesome or adults will escape while you are snapping it down. On several occasions I have


put a thin stick on a hinged lid so it could be snapped shut without getting near. If the nest is low

and in a safe spot with plenty of elbow room, just run up, jam the jar on, and bust the nest free,

then snap the lid and run with the catch in the jar.

Smoke can be used to dope the wasps for a short time. It doesn't take any special dung smoke

to put them in a stupor for a moment. Any smoke will do. Toilet paper smokes nice. So do cotton

rags. Just make sure the wasps don't all get cooked in the nest. If you are not so concerned with

eating the adults, a nest can simply be knocked down with a stick or rock, the adults scattered,

and the nest picked up for harvesting the larvae and pupae only.

Once captured, separating the adults from the nest is a pretty easy business. Use a wide pan

or skillet filled with boiling water. With holes punched in the lid, or with the lid cracked, turn the

jar upside down into the water and hold it under. The hot water goes in and the adults all hit it

and die pretty quickly. Knock them loose along with the nest into the water. Now quickly fish the

nest back out of the water so the larva do not cook. If they get tenderized by too much by

cooking in the nest, they will come apart when they are extracted from their chambers.

Cleaning and Cooking

Cleaning out the chambers is the amazing part of the process because you will be pulling out

larvae, pupae, and also adults ready to emerge. Use some tweezers to fish out the food. Check

each chamber, every hole. Sometimes it looks like there's nothing down in that hole, but what

you find with tweezers will surprise you. Pull the paper tops off of the closed chambers. Don't

worry. They are not yet ready to move fast until they have hatched out, dried off, and hardened.

The above method for one by one removal is a fun and educational experience for the kids

and childish adults. If you really want to get down on some fast removal from the chambers, a

spray nozzle at the kitchen sink or outdoor hose can shoot its pinpoint jet streams into the

chambers and blast the larvae up and out very quickly. The closed-off chambers that contain the

pupal stages will still need to be opened and the pupae removed by hand with tweezers or a sharp

stick.

Eating the adults that died in the boiling water and the oldest ones that you removed from the

chambers yields good nutrition, but they can be pretty stickly to swallow because of the older

exoskeleton, legs, and wings. If they are young, they are more tender, but the legs and wings

might need to be pulled off. Even so, I usually sizzle them up with some tamari or soy sauce,

chew the good stuff out, and spit out the remains.

Mud dauber nests are a lot easier to capture. Just scrape or break them off of the mounting

surface. Then soak them in water for few minutes to soften and wash away the mud casings.

Then the larvae and pupae can be easily picked out and rinsed off. There are not usually the

numbers as in a paper nest, but boy howdy are they good!


There is some research going on experimenting with wasp farming and there is much more to

be discovered in that area.

Grasshoppers

Someone at a bug-eating demo will always ask me, “Are insects kosher?” Grasshoppers are

kosher. All bugs with jumping legs are kosher. And anything you see that's shaped at all like a

grasshopper is kosher. There. Now you know of 8,000 kinds of grasshopper to eat, and you can

put the 8,000 species on your list along with all the thousands of species of crickets, katydids,

locusts, and lubbers.

What's the difference between a lubber

and a locust? It doesn't really matter much.

They all look sort of like grasshoppers so you

can eat them. A lubber looks like a four-way

cross between a huge grasshopper, a black

mole cricket, a Texas red devil katydid, and a

dinosaur. A locust looks like a grasshopper on

steroids. There. I did my best. See why we're

working with large groups and staying away

from Latin species names and lists?

Grasshoppers or crickets are usually the first bugs that come to mind for most people when

the conversation turns to eating insects. They are both used in Mexico for some very special

tacos, other dishes, and just as a snack by themselves.

In some places, even in the States during our earlier days, when the locusts were destroying

the crops, they were harvested and dried to replace the lost winter food supply.

Some of my first careful and cautious nibbles of insect were the “drumsticks” from the

hoppers’ thick “thighs.” Raw or cooked, they can be pulled and stripped with the teeth to extract

the muscle and might provide the bug-eating newbie the small doorway they need to get over the

mental block about eating the rest of the bug someday.

The taste can vary a lot depending on what they fed on throughout their life. Purging out their

digestive tract by keeping them in a container overnight (I use a paper bag to give them space to

not pile up and kill each other so much) will get their innards out of them but even so, the flavors

of their foods is built in.

Hoppers do take on other flavors well. Lemon, cayenne, garlic, TABASCO®, or whatever

flavorings you like on any other meaty or crispy snacks works. They can be fun when fire-


roasted on a skewer. They are especially tasty this way if you like the burnt popcorn at the

bottom of the pan as much as I do. To each his own.

Grasshoppers can be very tender with a soft chitin exoskeleton immediately following a molt.

They advance through several nymph stages, becoming larger and larger with each new body

until they finally max out as an adult. As with many other insects, when a hopper sheds his

skeleton, he will be very tender even if he is large, in an older nymph stage.

Or to the contrary, you can find a little, tiny one in a first or second nymph stage, who is just

about ready to crack open his old, hard, chitin shell. This little one will get stuck in your throat if

you don't pull the legs off or cook it till it's burned a bit.

Why am I making this nymph and skeleton detail so all-important? Because I want you to

enjoy it. I've seen people who might have enjoyed part or all of the diverse world of

entomophagy, but they rejected it forever at the first bite because they erringly ate an improperly

prepared stickly, stabbing grasshopper that should have had his legs and wings pulled off and

then been fried to a crisp.

There are also differences in texture and chitin content amongst the 8,000 species. You will

learn the delicious varieties in your own area as you try them all out. I find myself targeting the

more tender catches and definitely would do some sorting out of the bugs and all their parts and

pieces if I wanted to serve something up for mom. There are some of the little, tiny green ones,

which fed on my Bermuda grass that I might let her eat raw. (You never heard me say that.)

How to Catch Them

Sometimes the grasshoppers that jump before you see them and fly faster than your spit flies

will really mess up your exotic meal plan. To use your hands, you can pick them off their roosts

at dusk while they are getting slowed down for the night.

That's good for grabbing a few, but if you are counting on catching up a bunch of them, get a

trash bag and a flexible, stiff wire or any material suitable to form a loop as large as the opening

of your bag. Make a two- or three-foot-long handle and fasten the loop so that it is strong but

lightweight. The handle can be a couple of feet longer so that it is mounted all the way across the

loop and fastened at both contact points. The stick across the bag's opening won't stop the

hoppers from getting in. Tape the opening of the bag onto the loop and take off waving it this

way and that through the infested areas. You can sort it all out later after the whole mess has been

dumped in the boiling water and then laid out. You can eat probably most everything in the bag.

All kinds of net tricks can work. One time I just threw a large, lightweight window screen

around in the grass then picked them out from under it. Or maybe put a net on your loop and

have someone hold it out the window while you drive along past the grass. I think you get the

general idea.


On a cool evening, some hoppers perch themselves on a upright stem of the plant they like to

eat and you can pick them off pretty easily. I guess they sleep. (Do they sleep? Dream? What do

grasshoppers dream about? Insecticides? Mating? Something to ponder.)

Crickets

The crickets, particularly the soft, brown “house cricket” are easily raised, making them a

favorite choice for food production. They are used in novelty candies and snacks, as live pet food

for many animals, and for serious human food predominantly in Mexico. Since they are available

in the States at the pet store for about a dime each, they are an easy topping for a potluck

casserole. Try this easy recipe: Cover the bottom of a shallow casserole dish with Alfredo sauce,

then layer medium-sized, brown crickets (not the black ones) on top of the sauce. Season with

salt, pepper, and spices to taste. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until brown on the edges,

approximately 10-15 minutes. People who are skeptical about eating the crickets alone, will nail

the casserole!

In the wild, they are fairly easy to catch, fat,

and meaty. At mating time, they swarm toward

lights at night, making for an easy harvest. Be

cautious though. Stay away from “might be dirty”

parking areas, gas stations, storefronts and so on.

Remember that crickets are what they eat and that

can get pretty gross in a parking lot. Also,

sometimes areas have been sprayed to kill the

crickets. The light in your backyard however will probably give you some nice, clean bugs. Pick

only whole, healthy, live specimens. The common black mole cricket and some other crickets

may have a scratchier skeleton and legs than the store bought house cricket depending again on

the species and how far along they are in age.

The cricket is a good starter for squeamish beginners because the “drumstick” legs can be

stripped between the front teeth to pull out and taste only muscle meat. Like grasshoppers, they

vary in taste and readily take on flavors of whatever they are cooked with. By themselves they

can be sometimes bitter or buggy tasting (go figure) depending on their diet. For a person's first

taste of bug, add a bit of lemon juice or cayenne or garlic and salt or soy sauce or any of a

gazillion flavorings so that you don't discourage the newbie. Again, make sure they're not allergic

to seafood and give them a nice tender one or have it well plucked and crisped or else you'll be

apologizing for the scratchy parts stuck in their teeth.


In the wild, there are hundreds if not thousands of cricket relatives. You can eat them all, but

since they burrow around in the dirt eating all kinds of decaying stuff, we should always cook

them. The black mole crickets, common everywhere in the U.S. are really thick shelled and

scratchy. There are other lighter colored kinds. Some of them are large, tender, and delicious. I

will skip over a black cricket if I've got a shot at a big, soft brownie. I've chomped a bunch of

them raw, but don't you do that unless in a survival situation. (I figure they are more of a top

dweller and my life is a “survival situation!”)

The many species of cricket seem to blend into the Katydid family which can get really big,

fat, and delicious. The giant lubbers look like a cricket, grasshopper and katydid all mixed up and

can cover the roads enough to make a stinky mess at times in north Texas.

Grubs and Beetles

It's sort of a yuk thing but not one to be neglected or

omitted from the diet. Grubs are one of the bulkiest and fattiest

bugs, as far as weight and volume go. We really need to know

about grubs for a few reasons even if you automatically want

to skip this one.

Grubs turn into beetles. Beetles are listed as edible and are

almost always eaten in their larval stage, the “grub.” It is a

term that gets used for dozens of kinds of beetle larvae. Some

are really great, the best bugs I've ever tasted. Another grub

was the worst.

Some beetles, like the darkling beetles, come from legless

worm stages, golden, shiny—the mealworm. We'll look at the

mealworms and wax worms later.

The June bug grub is probably the most well-known since

it eats garden and lawn roots. There are many variations of

close relatives to the June bug. Those species just seem to

blend from some very small types to some very large beetles

and larvae.

Different kinds of ground-dwelling grubs are going to be

eating their way through different kinds of soils. Therefore

they not only vary in taste, but in especially rich, particularly

manure-rich, soil they may contain E. coli, salmonella, or listeria. As mentioned earlier, a

Important Reasons to

Learn About Grubs

∙ There are a lot of

delicacy grubs, such as

the wood borers.

∙ Grubs are prevalent

almost everywhere and

can get very highly

populated at certain

times and places.

∙ Under certain

conditions, soil-eating

insects (grubs) and their

emerging adults can be

dangerous eaten raw.

Really Good and Some

Not So Good Grub


particularly nasty human-infecting, parasitic worm can be present under some conditions. All

soilborne grubs must be thoroughly cooked in order to guarantee safety.

I ate some grubs of one of the June bugs, a large, reflective green beetle that laid their eggs in

an old goat yard. Even though I washed them over and over, they still tasted like goat caca.

Bottom-feeders. Not kosher. Grubs from the garden have a garden soil effect in your mouth. The

giant grubs in the wood mulch pile, bigger than a large

man's thumb, taste like wood mulch even after they are

cleaned out.

The dung beetle grub is actually a pretty clean looking

and hefty sized grub. I recently found some while turning a

compost pile. Large marble-sized balls of excrement, very

light weight, were rolling down the slope of the pile as I

tossed the material. I started seeing smashed grubs where I

was walking and couldn’t figure why I wasn’t seeing the

grubs as I threw the material. It turns out that they were

larvating (another new word for the day: larvating) and

pupating in the hollow balls of caca. The egg hatches in

there and the larvae eat the balls hollow as they grow and

end up with a nice, thin-walled s*%# chamber. Maybe not

kosher. Definitely clean and cook these! I haven’t tasted

them yet, I'm watching them develop. They are very clear

and it's hard to imagine how they can look so clean

considering what they're raised on.

In my earlier experimental days, I cooked up some goat-

yard grubs. without cleaning out the tract. They were

horrible. Like I said at the beginning, I don't want you to go

through what I went through to get what I got.

Theoretically, if you cooked it enough you can eat it. Don't

do that. There's no way to make that a good experience even

though it is safe if cooked thoroughly. Cut open and clean

out all soil-munching grubs! (One old-timer told me that

he's been popping raw grubs from the garden for years and

“they taste like steak.” Not recommended.)

The outer tube cooks up very oily and quite a bit of

great protein can be chewed out of the well-cooked strips.

Cooking well, but not so crisp, saves some of the nutrition,

but you may need to spit out the chewy cud. Crispy fry

How to Clean a Grub

Cleaning out a soilborne

grub can seem pretty gross

since they look like they are

about to explode with you-

know-what, but we're not

talking about making

cupcakes here.

Cut its head off and smash

it so he can't see what you are

about to do to his torso. Cut

its other end off, slit it up the

side so the tubular body opens

to a flat square of meat. Then

very gently, as not to lose the

delicate fatty layer, put the

grub in water, either

submerged in a bowl or under

a running tap. Rub out the

“brown stuff” so you are left

with a mostly white square of

meat ready to fry like bacon.

There ya go. It's still going to

taste dusty, much like where it

came from because that's

what is built in, but at least

you're not eating the mud,

crap, or whatever it ran

across. They're not picky

eaters.


them with salt and spices if you like pork rinds. Spice them a lot. They generally taste sort of like

dirt otherwise.

There's a huge industry yet undeveloped. Large grubs could be raised on rotting wood chips.

They could be liquefied by boiling in potassium hydroxide in the same manner that soy is

liquefied to make textured vegetable protein (TVP). When hit with an acid, like vinegar, the

liquid protein precipitates into clumps. That's how they make TVP to look like Grape-Nuts

cereal. This product will be called textured insect protein, or TIP, and you won't have to go to the

lengths that it takes to make soy taste like meat because TIP is meat!

When I cooked up grubs at a self-reliance conference and passed out the samples, the first

person said, “They taste like bacon!” The next said, “It tastes like shrimp!” Then the last person

that I wouldn’t have even expected to taste it, much less like it, says, “This is good! It's meat!”

That's what I've been trying to say! Insects are meat!

One of the good grubs would be the wood borer beetle's larvae, which tunnel through dead

wood. Identifying them is no problem. If it's boring its way through the old, rotting tree or

making those squiggly paths just under the dead bark, it's a borer of some type. Eat it. I consider

them clean and pop them raw if I'm lucky enough to happen on one. Don't do as I do. Do as I say.

Cook it. I wouldn't want you to be the first one out of the millions who have eaten raw borer

grubs to discover some rare, tree-infecting virus from Mars that made its way into the wood

grub's body.

Cooked up in a skillet, similar to the wasp larvae, the fats harden to something like the

texture of bacon fat, and they are oily like the bacon, which makes me salivate like Pavlov's dog

when I see a wood borer grub.

One trouble with the borers is that they are laid here and there by the mother and grow up

spaced apart from each other in a fairly solitary fashion. They can be hard to find even with a

soft log to split open. I watch for where the raccoons or opossums have been tearing into a fallen

log. Sometimes they don't get them all. They're a bit of a delicacy and the competition is stiff.

Darkling beetle larvae are sold in the pet stores as live pet feed. These “medium size

mealworms” and other various golden-brown, smooth, segmented, shiny plastic-looking beetle

larvae are all edible and can be found under logs, leaves, mulch or sometimes in the soil. The

ones from the wild should be cooked well considering the parasite risk. We'll cover homegrown

mealworms separately in the Farming Insects chapter.


Adult Beetles-

Beetles don't grow bigger after they emerge from the underground

pupa stage, so when you find a smaller June bug you are looking at a

different species. While most beetles are usually eaten as larvae, all

beetles can be eaten, including the water beetles. I put the tougher

skinned, older beetles on the “eat if I have to list” because of the hard

shell. These, I chew to get the good stuff and spit out the hulls. Even

though these are adult beetles, because they have emerged from

underground larva they must be well-cooked. June bugs are known to carry a particularly large

and nasty parasitic worm.

It is convenient that very substantial numbers flock to a porch light for an easy harvest. When

they are caught young or if they are one of the smaller more tender species they can be delicious

and tender enough to eat whole by the spoonful.

That happened at a Bug Fest where someone showed up with a gallon Ziploc bag full three-

inches deep with a smaller species of what looked like a June bug. I buttered and salted them a

bit. To my surprise (since I thought they would be tough) the whole bowl of hundreds was

crunched up in a minute or two by the heaping spoonful. A bit of salty, buttery or spicy sauce

makes them really very good.

The older tougher beetles are good, but like many other insects they require a bit of picking

off of the wings and legs and are better cooked to a crisp. Be willing to spit after you've chewed

the goodies out of the pulp.

If you do not know the species or life cycle of a beetle, there's a chance it was an

underground grub as a baby and may contain soilborne parasites or pathogens so cook them well.

Some beetles, the ladybug being one, produce bitter-tasting or even slightly toxic

compounds. They are not toxic enough to do anything but taste bad unless you were to eat

hundreds of the nasty, bitter-tasting bugs. If it tastes really bitter or chemical, I skip it and go find

a better tasting beetle.

Ants and Termites

Don't overlook the small bugs. Some of them nest together in the hundreds of thousands.

Ants and termites are the only insect officially listed as safe to eat raw on the more restrictive

lists. It's a very, very clean nest if you can find one in a situation where the ants and all of their

brood can be collected. I've heard reports from ex-military members who had been out on


wilderness survival training eating ants. They say that even only eating one at a time takes some

of the edge off of the hunger. The little bursts of protein and oils help.

My best harvests of ants have been a small

type of wood ant that nests in my storage shed.

There is always a stack of plastic tote lids, or a

folded tent or something that they squeeze

between to make their nest. The first time we

found this, I knocked them, their eggs, and their

larvae into a cardboard half funnel to get them

into a smaller container. We used a five-gallon bucket and kept shaking them down to the bottom

until the skillet heated. We dumped it all into boiling water to separate a few bits of floating

debris and immobilize the ants. Then we just scooped out the half cup of ants and brood into a

bowl to eat with corn tortilla chips.

Ants have varying amounts of formic acid in their body which tastes like citric acid, a bit

lemon zingy. That ant dip was particularly zingy and the two eight-year-olds, my daughter and

her friend, would not share but a nibble with me. It really was very tasty even unseasoned.

Most ants either bite with mandibles or sting with various amounts of punch ranging from

slight tingle to severe stinging, itching, swelling or blistering. Eating the adults raw usually

involves biting them before they bite you. Adults can become like a plastic, empty shell with

neither much pleasure nor food value, lots of chew, not much meat, just skeleton. The larvae and

eggs are definitely the way to go.

A friend and I raided a nest of very fast, large black ants under a plastic swimming pool. We

grabbed the twenty or so big fat, white pupae from the scurrying babysitters, split them between

the two of us, and munched down right there. These guys were nearly as big as a small peanut

and packed twice the delicious nutritious punch.

Caterpillars, Moths, and Butterflies

There are around 13,000 kinds of butterflies and some 200,000 kinds of moths, but we're

going to try to keep it pretty simple. They all have a larval stage where they are commonly called

a caterpillar or worm, and a pupal stage that is sometimes in a cocoon, but not always.

The adult moths surprised me. I love the moths. I figured that they must be pretty clean, just

flying around sucking nectar and with their bodies covered with that silky dust. So I snagged one

by the porch light, popped it in my mouth, and started chewing fast. Sweet and nutty they were. I

ate a bunch, no problem. They are great cooked and the most of the smaller and medium-sized


ones are tender enough to eat wings, legs, and all. It is

convenient, too, that they congregate at lights at night for an

easier harvest than chasing butterflies.

The larvae are the most commonly consumed because of

the greater numbers in a harvest. Since each species usually

only lays its eggs on certain types of plants, particular kinds of

worms appear sometimes in great numbers on a particular kind

of plant.

Some of larvae gather toxins from the host plant and are called “poisonous caterpillars.”

Don't let that scare you off. We're not talking poisonous like a rattlesnake or death angel

mushroom. Poisons in larvae are eaten from the toxic plants they live on. In a few of the

caterpillars, bristly fuzz or spines contain some of this irritating stuff and can cause a rash,

stinging or burning on the skin. I don't think they'd be much fun in the mouth raw. Even without

the toxins, the fuzz is meant to irritate, and so I just stay away from the furry ones altogether.

Some of the butterflies get enough bitter juice in them that if you ate a bunch of the nasty

soap-tasting ones, you might get a bellyache. They're designed to be obnoxious, so if they taste

really, really bad, just don't eat them.

The big, fat as my thumb, lime-green tomato hornworm in my garden tasted like a tomato

plant—pretty bad. And I guess if I ate enough tomato plant or too many of those worms, I'd have

a bellyache. However, if I were really getting hungry with no tomatoes but a few worms eating

my plants, I certainly would eat a few.

Inchworms are smooth and soft skinned and are more often feeding on more neutral tasting

leafy trees. They are going to be more palatable.

Some say that striking colors are a warning and use the yellow-black, zebra-striped monarch

caterpillar (that only feeds on milkweed's toxic leaves) as an example. I think it is more a

coincidence in the monarch that its colors are bright and am sure that many other kinds of

strikingly colored, smooth worms will turn out to be edible.

Keep in mind that out of the 10 million species of insects, only

3,000 (.03%) at most have been listed as edible in the West. The fact

is that since we have not yet scratched the surface in discovering our

total insect protein resources, you and I will be making discoveries

than have never been recorded. You can document a new edible

moth tree worm and name a dish after yourself.


Bees

This is so politically incorrect to even talk about, but honeybee larvae and pupae are not only

edible but in my opinion are a delicacy.

At our neighborhood association meeting we had a

beekeeper visit to give a presentation. The hive section

that he brought along to show us the various stages of

growth was dropping the larvae that had been disturbed

and were crawling out of their cells. The topic of

conversation shifted radically when I started popping the

little honey nuts into my mouth raw. They were the most

tender sweet, buttery little morsels and each one came

with its own bit-o-honey on top.

Now I can't think of many edibles that will get you

into more trouble with the conservationists than eating

honeybees. It's like eating bats. We really need them and they're already in trouble. They need to

be cultivated and multiplied rather than eaten for lunch. However if you ever should find

yourself in a survival situation, a wild hive can be a treasure trove packed with protein along

with the sweet stuff. I am convinced that the clean baby food and tidy nest make these little guys

perfectly safe to eat raw. A chunk of wax chambers can be popped into the mouth and chewed

until all of the honey and sweet meat are enjoyed.

Capturing the hive can get a bit tricky, but like the wasps, a good smoking with smoldering

paper or leaves will render the adults temporarily stupid. I said temporarily. Work fast and get

away.

If there is no hive to be found, but there are adults working a particular bush or field in large

numbers, they can be swatted down and captured or netted. They need to go into the hot water

for an easy finish. They are tender enough to chew and swallow with no need to strip the legs

and wings off

There are many species of bees other than the honeybee and they are all edible. The

bumblebee is a big bite that people seem to like to bake and chocolate cover. A trip through the

field waving the net or bag to and fro is likely to capture all kinds of strange-looking,

unidentified bees along with the rest of the grasshoppers, leafhoppers, moths, flies, and beetles.

The bees that are flying around the trashcan, drinking out of the soda bottles are an easy

catch and at a good catching location since the bees are gorged with sugar from the sodas. When

bees are gorged with sugar, they will not sting. This is how the bee show fellow puts the

thousands of bees on his face to make a bee beard and never gets stung.


Stingers and venom are no problem once the bees are cooked. I sometimes have gotten a

sting or two while messing with the live ones though. I consider it a gift especially if the sting is

close to my calcium deposited left wrist, my old injured knee or any other irritated joints. The

stings trigger the body to send natural cortisones to the area which has a long-term, anti-

inflammatory soothing effect on aching joints and old injuries. The stings also stimulate the

immune system. I stung myself six times on the wrist with

captured honeybees to ease the pain many years ago. My hand

swelled up like a softball and itched to high heaven for a week

but it did the job alright. A bit of overkill maybe but it overkilled

them worse than it did me. I stung my mother's arthritic hands,

too. She didn't seem to like it much. Maybe it's a guy thing?

Stink Bugs

Don't put these on your pizza. I tried that the day I heard they were edible. It was disgusting.

That's just my personal opinion. They taste like they smell. I think it's very apple cinnamon, but I

just hate that on pizza.

I mention stink bugs because they suck on tomatoes making yellow spots and leave their

nasty-tasting spit in the tomato. It ruins the tomato. Unless of course you like stink bug with

tomato. If you do, then you might like them on pizza, too. The more you eat, the less will be

sucking on my tomatoes.

They actually have a taste that is very unique and is even tasty to some people. They're like

anchovies. You either like them or you hate them. I've seen a liver pâté (almost liquefied liver)

topped with stink bugs but I'm not going there. I'm sticking to roasted for now.

Spiders

Tarantulas are served fire roasted or battered and fried, and the pictures look pretty darned

good. There are tarantulas in the southwest U.S. big enough to make a small meal, and yes, they

are said to taste like chicken. The next closest relatives to the tarantula that you will find

commonly across the United States and most of the world are the wolf spiders. They get pretty

big, almost three inches tip-to-tip, are plump, very hairy, and have two dark stripes straight down

the middle of the back. They are big enough to make it worth the hunt. I assumed that since the

tarantulas are good that their smaller cousins are tasty, too, and I was right.


The fun thing, and a darn good thing, too, if you're real hungry, is that you can easily find

them at night using a headlamp. If a light is mounted on your forehead, all spiders’ eyes will

reflect back to you as brilliant emerald-green lights. Only you alone can see them glowing

because the light is shining directly from above your own eyes and so others viewing at a

different angle do not get the same reflection. Everyone on the hunt will need their own

headlamp. Tiny spiders can be seen all over the place and are easily spotted fifteen feet away.

The big boys, you can spot 50 to 100 feet away and a tarantula even farther.

Scooping them into a container is easy, but if too many are

kept together overnight, they will eat each other till only the

champion remains standing. They need to be frozen or cooked

immediately unless you can store the big ones alive separately.

It doesn't necessarily need to be a purebred wolf spider to be

good to eat. There are other very large and meaty night-roaming

spiders and any of them are good to eat. Most all spiders have a

bit of some sort of venom so be careful. However the venoms are

destroyed by cooking so no worries there.

The brown recluse and black widow? Chickens eat them and it doesn't seem to bother them.

Supposedly, black widow venom, being a nerve poison, doesn't do anything when worked

through the digestive tract. But I haven't heard anything clear and 100% conclusive about them.

Since I'm not a chicken, I'm not going to fool with them. There may be some room for research

here, but just for the record, I say don't do it.

Scorpions

Scorpions are not insects and it's hard to find enough in the wild to make a difference in your

life. But, they sure are fun to cook up at a party. They are farmed in China by the millions and

end up in a lot of high dollar dishes and candies. I throw a few of them into every bug-eating

demo skillet and use the deadly bark scorpion for the biggest

thrill. It's thrilling because we've been misinformed about their

sting.

They are not at all deadly or anything close. Some sources

have said that their sting is deadly but it is no worse than a wasp

and much less than a honeybee. I get stung at least once a year

working in the yard. I had one crawl down my pants, right near

my zipper, and deliver its zap. That really got my attention and I


yelled out something that I'm not proud of, but I'm not dead.

The big, fat pregnant females are actually a pretty meaty nibble. Some folks eat them raw in

which case the stinger definitely needs to be cut off. The poisons can be eaten raw or cooked but

don't eat it raw with the stinger still there! Cooking the scorpion softens and brittles the stinger

and so it can be eaten with no bad effect other than a theoretical slight poke in the tongue if your

luck is really running bad.

Flies

Now I know I've got your attention. Flies are on the edible

list. The red, gross light is flashing and you'd rather skip this

chapter. I'm at my own limit here, but almost every time I've had

a staggering fear about one bug or another, I was proven wrong.

But now we're talking about maggots. I mean real maggots.

Remember that most insects are eaten in their larval stage? That

squirming mass, and I mean mass, of maggots can be collected,

washed, sifted, purged (hopefully on a bit of fresh food), and

cooked into the usual rich, fatty meat. I have not done this yet because I can almost always think

of something else much more important to do. OK. The truth is that I'm afraid, but I'm not sure

about just exactly what it is I haven't gotten over.

Adult flies? A couple of people have told me that they are good. They may be. I'm going to

veer off here from the housefly and bottle flies to a bunch of other flying things, some that look

like a fly and some that don't.

Dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, dobsonflies… There are thousands of flying things that

go by the name of “fly,” and again we're not going to muddle our brains with separating families,

genus and species. We’re going to get way low-tech here so that we can cover massive groups in

one brief section. For our discussion, let’s say flies are thousands of bugs that fly that are not

bees, wasps, crickets, hoppers, moths, butterflies, true bugs (in the “bug” family) or beetles.

If it's not these and it goes flying by, catch it and eat it. I was standing outside just a few

nights ago, and here comes some sort of long-winged, scraggly long-legged, clumsy bug looking

like a big, plump mosquito crossed with an inch-long fly. Three seconds and it was all over. I'll

never know what kind of fly it was or even if it was a true fly. And it will never know what hit it.

It was good and I've had a few others since then.

The soldier fly is a very interesting critter. It looks like an inch-long, bluish-black wasp or

mud dauber as a protective disguise. Their wings are folded differently than the wasps, lying flat


on their back rather than sticking up and out like the wasps. Their head has more of a rounded,

fly look to it rather than the pointed, heart-shaped head of a wasp or bee. It flies very much faster

than the wasps, more like a fly (which it is), and will startle you when they “buzz” you.

Soldier flies have a long history of cooperative living with humans and are actually quite

friendly to us. I have nurtured them in compost piles and composting toilets for years, and I

swear to God, I think they appreciate and communicate with us. I have several times had an adult

buzz around while talking to a friend and come closer and closer until it was hovering about my

face. Since I know it's not a wasp, but rather my friend, she lit on my nose, and I looked at the fly

cross-eyed while explaining to my friend about soldier flies.

As far as I know, it has not been used for human food yet and here's why. The soldier fly

larvae only eat the gooiest, richest, stinkiest, rotting, grossest messes imaginable. They aren't so

interested in the more fibrous, grassy, gentler smelling manures of horses and cattle. They want

human or pig manure. They want your rotting vegetables in the compost pile. If it smells like

s#*&, they will lay their eggs in it.

This is actually a beautiful arrangement because the larvae eat what we want to get rid of the

most, and they do it in record time. A soldier fly composting toilet will become a teeming,

writhing, mucking digester. (That's mucking, with an M. They sound like “muck, muck, muck”

while they eat, but the adult is quiet while mating hence we have a silent F.) They seem to

appear from nowhere. In a few weeks thousands of hungry larvae are present and can devour a

dropping in an hour. Then they eat it again and again and again. In two hours, the smell is gone

and the worms are fatter. When they are ready to pupate, they crawl out of the “pot” and can be

caught in a tray for chicken food. Is this the ultimate in recycling or what?!

Massive soldier fly operations on swine farms are disposing of tons of manure and producing

tons of chicken food. A friend of mine has a soldier fly composting outhouse and was worried

because the county's septic inspection fellow was coming out for a look around. When the

inspector saw the toilet, its lack of odor, the lack of water waste and disposal issues, he said, “If

everyone were doing what you're doing here, we wouldn't have all of these problems.” And then

he left.

I have tried cleaning the larvae from my compost pile but they never seem to get “clean”

smelling. As you can see, they are not appetizing in any way by themselves. But neither is a

soybean and look at what we can make with it: meat loaf, hamburgers, milkshakes, and hot dogs.

TIP can be made from soldier fly larvae using the same process. No pathogen can survive boiling

in hydroxides to produce the world's first s*%#burger. Ooo! Aaah! The miracles of nature!

I admit, it's a disgusting thought, but it stands to reason. The more you think about it, the

more it makes sense. It's solving two of our biggest problems: getting food and disposing of it.

And both parts of the food problem are killing people all over the world every day. I'm talking


about high-grade meat from caca and some say I've lost my scruples. But mark my words, you

haven't heard the last of soldier fly TIP yet.

Miscellaneous

The misc group is all those weird little and sometimes huge bugs that you can't quite tell

what category they are in. For instance, the walking stick. They aren't in the groups that we

covered but should not be ignored. The first one I ever ate was a half-inch wide, ten-inch long,

fat female. That's substantial in the bug world! I undercooked her with no flavorings. The

brightest green goo oozed out when I cut into the abdomen. She was as tough as could be and the

flavor did not outweigh the goo and chew. But later, we breaded one salt and peppery and

“chicken fried” it at a Bug Fest in Austin. The kids were fighting over every last nibble.

Where does one categorize an ant lion? They are actually very fat and tasty little predators

that hide under the sand at the bottom of cone-shaped traps. Ants slide into the traps and can't get

out. It takes some scratching around in the dirt to get a teaspoonful, but the reason I mention

them is because during the pits of the worst drought ever in Texas, there were no plants to eat.

There were no animals to be found. There were even no bugs. But wait. Look deeper. I found a

patch of the cone shaped traps in the sand and pulled out a couple dozen fat lions. They only eat

ants and so are clean raw, and the protein content is good. God knows where they get moisture in

such a drought, but they were really full of moist meat and fats.

My point is that even if you can't categorize it, don't write it off. Just remember the

underground “bottom-feeder” rule and cook it if you are in question as to where it lives. Check it

for bitterness to be sure it won't give you a bellyache in case it ate a bunch of “toxic” plants.


Chapter 4

Farming Insects

Farming Crickets

Brown house crickets are one of the most commonly farmed insects in the U.S. and also one

of the easiest to grow. They are farmed commercially for foods, treats, baits, and pet feed.

Cricket farming will only increase as the use of insects for human food becomes more integrated

into our culture.

The easiest way to start with crickets is to begin with a stock of 15 or 20 adults

from the pet store where they are sold for about a dime each. Since you are

wanting babies, pick out mostly females with a long ovipositor. That's the egg-

laying tube that looks like a long stinger sticking half an inch straight out the back

end. The males are smaller and don't have the long protrusion.

The inside of the breeding container needs smooth side surfaces so the crickets

slip when they try to climb. It is good if the bottom is also smooth so that it is easy

to wipe when cleaning the bin. The adult bin needs to be at least eighteen inches

high to keep them from jumping out. Occasionally one can get a lucky jump even

at 18 inches so a aerated cover or screen might help if you want a shorter bin.

Twenty adults don't need much floor space. These should fit nicely in a 18 x 12 inch aquarium or

storage tote and leave a little room to run around.

Getting Started

Water Dish

The watering dish can be a jar lid. Baby crickets will drown

in a drop of water. They'll just walk right up to it and stick their

head in it. Then it flows around their body and it's all over. A spill

can be a disaster (on a cricket community disaster scale). Fold a

paper towel or cloth into a half-inch thick pad or cut a piece of

sponge to set in the lid. Saturate the pad with water but don't

leave puddles. The crickets will suck water off of the absorbent

pad. Replace the pad when it gets moldy or dirty from cricket

droppings.

Cricket Farm Starting

Equipment

3 x 3 in. Watering dish

3 x 3 in. Food dish

5 x 6 in. Paper egg

carton hide-climb area

4 x 4 in. Egg-laying dish


Food Dish

A jar lid can also serve as the food dish. Crickets kick their food around a bit and so a

container helps keep it tidy. They eat a little bit of just about anything, but they need some

protein so crunch up a few pieces of cat food for their dish. A little powdered milk goes a long

way when they need a change. Nutritional yeast is a great shot of protein and vitamins also.

Some people use a thick potato slice to add to the feed and supply water at the same time.

Hide Out

An egg carton or cut-out sections of one should be placed upside down to give them surface

area to climb and provide “hides” to keep them from each other. Hundreds of adult crickets can

share a bin, but they are a tad bit cannibalistic. The hides allow larger numbers to share a bin

without being so crowded together that they start with the bad habit. The egg cartons can be

stacked this way and that to make cricket condos several stories high.

Egg-Laying Dish

The laying dish should be a one-inch deep container such as an empty eight-ounce, chip dip

plastic container. Punch a few holes in the bottom for drainage in case it ever gets over watered.

Fill this about three-quarters deep with a fluffy, clean soil mix. Peat moss can be used or an airy

bagged product, but don't use one with plant feed added to it. If you use a native soil, be sure it is

fluffy and well decomposed. A too rich soil mix will fester with all kinds of bacteria and fungi

that might rot the eggs. It should have plenty of organic fluff (humus) but that fluff should be old

enough to have all the rich juicy stuff leached out. The soil must be kept slightly damp but not

soggy.

Nursery Care

When the egg laying dish is placed in the bin with your fifteen or twenty crickets, you will

almost immediately see females plunging their ovipositor into the dirt. The eggs look like tiny

rice grains. It will take ten days before any eggs hatch. They need to grow in a special baby bin

so they don't get eaten up by the parents. Plan on moving the egg dish to the nursery bin at day

10 or when you see the first, bright-white babies hatching out.

The fifteen or twenty adults will give birth to about a thousand babies. Use the rag or paper

towel watering system. Be careful not to overdo it or make spills. The newborns can drown in a

single drop of water left out of place.

The containers for the babies only needs to be about eight inches deep until they get older

and start jumping higher. Then they should be disbursed out into larger growing bins. One

thousand babies can fit in a single 1 x 2 foot container, but plan on splitting them up in a few

weeks. Five hundred adults need about a 2 x 2 foot space with plenty of hides. Keep the bin

where it won't get over 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Room temperature usually works fine. As you


pick a spot, keep in mind that they will make lots of singing noise after puberty and the bins can

get smelly when they need to be cleaned up.

Pick out any dead crickets whenever they die, and wipe out the box as needed to keep it

smelling less and to prevent disease. Just like people, they can die off anyway and not just

because they grew old, but from cricket violence, cannibalism, and all those things that happen

when you crowd an overpopulation of any species into a cramped environment. (Beware

humans. You, too, are a species.)

This small-scale type operation at home is either more about just having fun or as a crop to

feed other animals including other farmed insects, spiders, and scorpions.

Farming Mealworms

Farming mealworms is becoming more and more common for several reasons. Mainly

because it's easy. It's a great way for pet owners to grow a high protein food for their lizards,

birds, fish, turtles—you name it. It can get costly running out to the pet store to pick a few dozen

while a few hundred or even a few thousand can happen almost by accident in a box in the closet

or cabinet. Almost everything likes to eat them, especially me. (Cajun spiced!)

Chicken growers are raising them for their special birds. Commercial mealworm farms mail

them out live and dried by the millions for the health focused pet raising operations and as top

quality bird farm feeds. The larger commercial mealworm operations will have up to 20,000

pounds of worms in a single 20 x 60 ft. building.

That's a lot of mealworms and compared to cattle yards and barns, that's a very small space.

Also keep in mind that raising insects for “meat” requires one fifth of the feed that it takes to

raise the same pound of meat from farm animals. You can easily see why commercial farming of

“food grade” mealworms for human food is a very attractive business and is being pushed by the

World Health Organization's efforts to roll bugs in to your diet.

Mark my words, textured insect protein is on the horizon using the same production

techniques as are used to make fake hamburgers out of soybeans, but TIP will be much better

tasting because remember, BUGS ARE MEAT!

Getting Started

To do a small closet operation, start with a plastic bin at least four inches deep. Fill it with an

inch or two deep with oats, bran, brewery waste, old dried bread, chicken starter, or a mixture of

any of those. Mealworms aren't too picky, so fill with anything grain based. This will not only be

their food but also is their substrate that gives them something to crawl around, party, and mate

in. Never wet the substrate. Molds would develop and ruin the whole mess.


Mealworms don't drink. In fact, there is hardly any water in

their bodies. Instead of watering, put three or four pieces of

carrot, apple, or potato in the box. The mealworms and

darkling beetles that emerge from the worms’ pupal stage will

nibble and get all the moisture that they need from their

nibbling. Replace the moist food when it gets dried out or

moldy.

Go to the pet store or fishing bait shop, buy twenty-five,

fifty, or a hundred starter worms, and throw them in the box. Buy a few extras to snack on if you

like. I always eat some just because they are there.

There are a few different varieties sold at the shops and online. The “super worms” or “giant

mealworms” are a different and larger beetle in the adult stage. All of them are raised the same.

Keep the box at warm room temperature. The worms will molt as they outgrow their

exoskeletons and appear as white albino-looking worms, which darken as their new skin hardens.

(The white ones are especially yummy!) After a few days to a week, some of the larvae will

pupate. They change into a long, fatter body. (Also especially yummy!) After a couple of weeks,

the pupae suddenly open up and a light brown beetle emerges. It will darken with age. The

darker ones will start mating and laying eggs right away.

Some folks just keep adding oats (or whatever feed substrate) to the box as the feed

disappears to allow the cycle to repeat over and over in the same box. The bottom of the box will

have powdery dry worm “poop” mixed with the microscopic eggs to begin the cycle again. More

serious farmers sift the powder and egg mix and start a new box. Some choose to remove the

pupae to a separate box so that they do not get nibbled on by the worms and beetles and also

keep the beetles and their egg-powder in a separate adult box.

Any way you go with it, it's hard to totally mess it up unless it gets too wet, freezes, or cooks

in the sun.

A message to entrepreneurs: Keep your eyes open for grant monies coming down the pike for

folks just like you who will in the future be supplying mealworms by the ton to a meat-

demanding market!

And a message to kids: Get your science and math mastered! There are a lot of new ways to

grow bugmeat that have not yet been invented. You are just as smart as that guy who invented

the light bulb! But remember, in order to be great and create on new frontiers, you will have to

be brave enough to be called weird because all the great ones were weird. I am proud to be

different, even with my big nose, red hair, and freckles.

Mealworm Farm

Supplies

4-inch deep Plastic Bin

Grain-based Substrate

Moist Food Item

25-100 Mealworms


In Closing

There is no closing to the endless research on insects as food. Almost every day I make some

new discovery or have a new experience with some bug or other, and breakthroughs are

happening worldwide. Just a couple of days ago, I snagged a little critter that was something

between a beetle and a true bug. I'll never know what it was exactly, but I grabbed it off my

shoulder and popped it in my mouth. Stunning! Zingy like sour lime, tender and delicious.

The next night, a little weevil-looking beetle walked up my shirt. That one was bitter like

soap and I was spitting all over the place. Maybe tomorrow I'll figure out how to get the fire ants

to come out of their mound and jump in a skillet.

The push for food production from insect sources is on. For developments in the industry,

take a look at the work by the United Nations, World Health Organization, and Food and

Agriculture Organization. The WHO’s forestry division program to inform and implement

insects as food for a needy world is outstanding. An Internet search for “FAO Insects” will pull

up information on the use of insects as food and upcoming industry opportunities. The exciting

material is extensive and points out that we are just beginning on the path of some world-

changing research and development. Their website is a great resource for further pursuit but

might be more than you can get through in a sitting.

I'll leave those piles of pages in the archives for now. You've got what you need. Whether or

not you choose to incorporate bugs into your diet today, you'll know what to do should the

occasion arise. And I bet that bugs might never look quite the same. When one crosses your path,

you may find yourself wondering what it tastes like.

Or you just might eat it.

Additional Resources

Grow Your Own Groceries. DVD. Directed by Marjory Wildcraft. United States: Rooster

Crows Productions, 2009. http://growyourowngroceries.com.

A two DVD set teaches you how to easily grow organic food in your

own backyard. Even beginners can produce healthy, nutritious fruits,

nuts, vegetables, meat, and eggs by following these simple methods.

Grow Your Own Groceries. "Core Community Members Area." Grow Prepare and Preserve

Your Own Food and Medicine. http://growyourowngroceries.org/core-community-members.

A private forum for people wanting to share, explore, and research growing food and medicine.

Join the community for access to webinars, events, collaborations, and additional resources.

Alternatives to Dentists. DVD and booklet. Directed by Doug Simons. United States: Rooster

Crows Productions, 2011. http://alternativestodentists.com.

Learn how to care for your teeth simply and naturally just as indigenous

peoples have been doing for centuries. In this DVD tutorial herbalist Doug

Simons teaches his technique for dental hygiene without reliance on

modern dentistry.

Wildcraft, Marjory. 7 Shortcuts to Finding the Perfect Survival Retreat. United States: Grow

Your Own Groceries, 2013. http://relocationshortcuts.com.

With future economic collapse a mathematical certainty, prepare for the

worst by establishing your survival retreat now. This streamlined guide

answers questions such as where to look for land, what natural resources

are needed, and how to select a defensible property.

http://growyourowngroceries.com/

http://growyourowngroceries.org/core-community-members/

http://alternativestodentists.com/

http://relocationshortcuts.com/

About the Author

Impossible to contain in a brief essay, Alio's world is a lifetime of exploration beyond the

frontiers of everyday experience, blowing off the ceiling and breaking down the walls of fixed

thinking. He is to be counted among the true Teachers of God, Saviors of a world, and deliverers

of the Miracle.

Cosmic planetary politician, warrior, student and teacher of limitless Love and Her eternal

triumph over the chains of fear and limitation that bind a tired world, he is a true bringer of

freedom and Light, dispelling untruths and illusionary constraints everywhen and everywhere

that he goes.

He goes with God and gratefully serves and acknowledges only that Power, that One true

voice. It is a voice for Truth, a voice for Love, a stand for God, and a cry from the wilderness at

his home in Texas on our behalf and on behalf of creation Herself.

Index

Allergies, 10

Ant Lions, 32

Ants, 11, 24

black ants, 25

wood ants, 25

Bees, 11, 13, 27

conservation, 27

stings, 28

Beetles, Adult, 24

Darkling. See Mealworms

Dung, 7, 22

Wood Borer, 23

Beetles, Larva. See Grubs

Bug Fest, 5, 14, 24, 32

Butterflies, 12, 25

Caterpillars, 12, 25

poisonous, 26

Composting Toilet, 31

Crickets, 8, 20

brown, 33

cooking, 20

female, 33

Crickets, Farming, 33

Damselflies, 30

Dragonflies, 30

Flies, 30

Grasshoppers, 7, 8, 11, 18

catching, 19

cooking, 19

Grubs, 11, 21

cooking, 23

in pet stores, 23

Inchworms, 12, 26

June Bug, 11, 21, 24

Ladybug, 24

Lubbers, 18, 21

Maggots. See Flies

Mayflies, 30

Mealworms, 8, 21, 23

Mealworms, Farming, 35

Mosquitoes, 15

Moths, 25

Mud Dauber, 17

Parasites, 11, 23, 24

Purging, 7, 18, 30

Scorpions, 13, 29, 35

Soldier Fly, 31

Spiders, 13, 28, 35

Black Widow, 29

Brown Recluse, 29

Tarantulas, 28

Wolf Spider, 29

Stings, 13, 16, 25, 26, 28, 30

Stink Bugs, 14, 28

Termites, 11, 24

Textured Insect Protein, 23, 32

Toxic Plants, 7, 12, 26, 32

Walking Sticks, 32

Wasps, 8, 11, 13, 15

catching, 16

cooking, 17

farming, 18

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