This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Orkin Ecologist for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
My husband and I attended Purdue University.
Every spring, they host a bug bowl.
Just before we graduated and moved from Indiana to Washington state, we spent some time at Purdue's bug bowl with our 1 year old son.
The events of the day, even inspired us to host our own cricket spitting contest.
The bug bowl also had the culinary arts department whipping up some lovely bug delicacies, which is when I first became aware of eating bugs as food.
Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a science fair research project with my 8 year old son. The only guideline was that it had to be bug related.
We both immediately remembered our cricket spitting days last summer and decided to research using bugs as food. Turns out, eating bugs are quite common in other countries.
We spent a few hours researching bugs that could be food on the internet.
We found some great facts and some even better pictures of the food that was created with the bugs.
In true science fair style, we made a tri-fold board that collected all of our research in one place.
One of the websites that we found most helpful in our research was the The Orkin Ecologist. We all know and trust the Orkin name as the leaders in pest control so who better to turn to to find out more fascinating facts about those creepy crawly bugs that they work with and have studied for over 100 years!
Did you know that meal worms take on the flavor of the item they were cooked in?
Scorpions are often eaten dead or alive, almost always skewered and grub worms have a gooey center that tastes a little bit like peanut butter!
Eating bugs provides you with a great source of protein and good fat. They are also extremely efficient to raise and more ecological!
Once we were finished with our poster board, we thought we would give some bugs a try!
Our local toy store carries these larvetes {meal worms} and crick-ettes in lots of different yummy flavors {bacon and cheese anyone?}
My daughter and I tried the sour cream and onion crickets and my son chose the BBQ meal worm.
They were crunchy!
My kids are always fascinated by the critters that they find. I will definitely be using the The Orkin Ecologist website again to find out more about the critters that my kids are observing, catching and playing with on their bug hunts.
We may not be whipping up any tarantula stew or scorpion skewers anytime soon, but we did find out a lot about the delicacies of these bugs in other countries! And next time I'm offered a meal worm, I probably won't jump back in disgust but will open up wide and take a bite!
No comments