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At work (and soon at home) I will be taking many depth stacked insect images from both a microscope and using a macro lens. Whilst I have a ring flash for the camera, I need a constant light source for the microscope, so I’ve started thinking and searching for a cheap LED ring light. My target price is under £50.

I remember seeing some fluorescent and white LED ring lights at an entomological fair and thinking they were rather expensive. The cheapest ring lights were the fluorescent ones, costing about £30 each. The LED rings were more, costing over £50. A quick Google search brings up a ring light for a Marumi compact camera ring light for £40 (RRP £77.62!) which still seems expensive and I don’t know how it attaches or if it would fit a microscope. Further searching turns up some in-car lights which could be adapted and an  LED microscope light which does exactly what I want (AC power, adjustable lighting and thumb screws) but costs a mere £500 and is not for sale in the UK.

DIY Ring Light © fdecomite

I am beginning to think I’ll need to build one… Any ideas?

After an introduction to Vincent Holt’s ‘Why Not Eat Insects?‘, I thought I would share some recipes from the book. Before I do, I hope you enjoy a quotation about the delights of eating insects from the author:

Does not the sweet scent of our cooked bodies tempt you? Fry us with butter, we are delicious. Boil us, grill us, stew us; we are good all ways!

I have adapted these recipes slightly to make them into instructional lists with steps. In the book they are interdispersed and written in continous prose.

Whilst the book touches on the subject, as with any wild food, you should consider the source so the food is free from unwanted contaminants. Collecting along a busy road, a path frequented by many dogs, or a sewage outlet is unwise. I am not recommending that anyone tries these recipes, although after trying them I shall report back. The woodlouse sauce is the one I will probably try first.

Fried Grasshoppers
Catch some large grasshoppers of an abundant species (Chorthippus brunneus would probably be good)
Remove the heads, legs and wings
Sprinkle the bodies with salt, peper and chopped parsley
Fry in butter then sprinkle with vinegar

Dressed Snails*
Boil the snails for 15 minutes
Remove the boiled snails from their shells then clean them thoroughly
Boil the cleaned, shelless snails for a further 15 minutes
Rinse and dry the snails, then fry gently in butter until golden brown

Woodlouse Sauce
Collect a quantity of the finest wood-lice to be found
Place the woodlice in boiling water
In a separate pan, melt ~100g (1/4 lb) of butter
To the melted butter, add: a teaspoon (6mL) of flour, small glass of water, a little milk and some salt and pepper
Cook the butter-based sauce until thick, the add the boiled woodlice

This sauce is supposed to go well with fish…

* Note: The author recommends keeping a simple snail enclosure, allowing you to control the vegetation they eat and preventing them from eating unsavoury plants, or plants poisonous to humans.

Reference:
Holt, V.M. (2007) WHY NOT EAT INSECTS? Whitstable, Pryor Publications Whitstable and Walsall.
Note: The original was book was published in 1885. The version I have is a fascimile.

After watching Heston Blumenthal’s Victorian Feast, I decided to get a book he referred to, ‘Why Not Eat Insects?‘ by Vincent Holt.

The Common Woodlouse, Oniscus asellus, an ingredient for a delicious sauce? I kid you not... (I know it's not an insect, but it's included in the book as you'll soon read!)

It is a quaint little book which was written to enrich the diets of the poor and is composed of 99 pages, which are divided into three sections: the first, ‘Why Not?’, gives arguments for eating herbivorous insects; the second, ‘Insect Eaters’, provides examples of insects eaten in antiquity and those nations, in modern times, which are called uncivilized; and the third, ‘Insects Which Are Good To Eat, And Something About Their Cooking’, gives some recipes and suggested menus. One such menu is:

Menu

Snail Soup
Fried Soles, with Woodlouse Sauce
Curried Cockchafers
Fricassée of Chicken with Chrysalids

Boiled Neck of Mutton with Wireworm Sauce
Ducklings, with Green Peas
Cauliflowers garnished with Caterpillars
Moths on Toast

Whilst some recipes (of sorts) are given, you are not told how to prepare moths on toast. I wonder which moths he was suggesting make a suitable cheese subsitute… As you can see from the delightful menu above, Holt does cover other invertebrates in the book, including molluscs and spiders.

Bear with me here, but I’m almost tempted to try the woodlouse sauce, because Holt writes the following:

I have eaten these, and found that when chewed, a flavour is developed remarkably akin to that so much appreciated in their sea cousins. Wood-louse sauce is equal, if not distinctly superior to, shrimp.

My family were slightly less enthusiastic about trying some of the recipes, but I am sure some of you are more adventurous! Recipes will follow…

Reference:
Holt, V.M. (2007) WHY NOT EAT INSECTS? Whitstable, Pryor Publications Whitstable and Walsall.
Note: The original was book was published in 1885. The version I have is a fascimile.

On Sunday I watched the first episode of an excellent cooking program, Heston’s Feasts, presented by the famous chef, Heston Blumenthal. The series covers four culinary time periods to produce adventurous dishes from unusual, forgotten and innovative ingredients and recipes.

The time period for the first episode was Victorian Britain and Blumenthal used Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ as the inspiration behind his dishes.  The Victorian feast started with a deceptive uniformly pink drink, composed of different layers of flavour-infused milk (cherry pie, custard, hot buttered toast, pineapple, toffee and turkey). This was followed by mock turtle soup (made from the head of a calf) and an entirely edible garden, before culminating with a giant and suggestively wobbling absinthe jelly.

The garden was particularly impressive and contained edible rocks, soil, plants and insects. As part of his research for using insects as food, Blumenthal consulted a Victorian book, ‘Why Not Eat Insects?’ by Vincent Holt. He followed this up with a visit to a famous British entomologist, Dr George McGavin.

McGavin talked to Blumenthal about edible insects and offered him a variety of insect-based foods, including fried crickets and meal worms. Blumenthal then used fried locusts and meal worms, filled with a tomato paste, as part of his edible garden. Even the apprehensive guests tried the cooked insects and seemed surprised that they were not disgusting.

You can watch the episode on the Channel 4 website and read a post-recording interview with Dr George McGavin.

If you are interested in getting a copy of ‘Why Not Eat Insects’ you can find it on Amazon.

Following on from two earlier posts (first post, second post) I tried the three invertebrate snacks that I got from Selfridges and, using the correct binomial names (as two of the names were wrong on the packaging), here are my thoughts:

I was disappointed with the very mild curry taste of the thai green curry crickets (Acheta domesticus) which didn’t taste like thai green curry at all, more like mild curry powder, but had an inoffensive taste overall. This was an interesting species to try because it is commonly sold in pet shops as reptile/invertebrate food and will happily live on many things (including vegetable waste) making it a viable invertebrate to culture for human food.

Edible insect: chocolate covered scorpion

The chocolate covered scorpion (Mesobuthus martensii) was fairly pleasant; the crunchy texture of the scorpion went well with the chocolate, making it feel like a biscuit. There was a very subtle taste of something savoury but it was masked by the taste of the chocolate. I would eat these again and so would my girlfriend.

Edible insect: giant toasted ant

A number of my friends tried the giant toasted ants (Atta cephalotes) and none of them liked the taste or the smell. I was the only one that liked them but they do have a very strong and distinctive taste, so I can see why they didn’t get universal taste bud acclaim! I think the packet description is fairly accurate, “… similar to crispy bacon with an earthy taste”.

I had a good time trying these and I intend to pursue the topic of insects as a food in further posts. If you’re interested in reading a bit more about insects and food now, have a read of Bug Girl’s latest post on cochineal, an insect derived food colouring.

I shall add some photos to this post soon.

Earlier in December I wrote about a new range of snacks that Selfridges had started to sell, and during a Christmas trip to London I visited Selfridges to buy some. I (and some friends) will be eating them soon to provide you some more photos and to describe how they taste.

Tenebrio molitor lollypops: part of the Selfridges display of invertebrate snacks (Copyright Elizabeth Livermore)

All of the snacks were from edible, an alternative online food shop, and were a little cheaper to buy at Selfridges than from the edible website.

I checked the packaging and found that the species names did not follow the proper protocol for binomial nomenclature: all names were either entirely in lowercase or uppercase, and none were italicised. The class of the scorpion was listed incorrectly as ‘INSECTA’ when it should have been Arachnida.

From left to right: Giant toasted ants, £12.45; Thai green curry crickets, £2.44; and a chocolate covered scorpion, £4.64.

I also investigated the species names (Giant toasted ants: Atta cephalotes, Thai green curry crickets: Acheta domestica, and the chocolate covered scorpion: Buthus martensii) and from my brief searches, A. cephalotes seems correct but the other two are synonyms.

I checked A. domestica in the Orthoptera Species File and it is listed as an unjustified emendation of A. domesticus. I found an entry for Mesobuthus martensii on the UniProt Taxonomy database where it listed B. martensii as a synonym.

I guess edible are not quite as good biologists as you would hope.

Last Friday (5th December) the London Lite newspaper wrote an article on a new range of snacks being sold at Selfridges, including some quotes from people tasting them:

“If someone gave that to me for Christmas I’d run out of the room.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks, once you get past the thought of it and the funny texture.”

What were they talking about?

A range of invertebrate snacks! You get to choose from*:

Barbeque-flavoured Worm Crisps, £2.75 (Tenebrio molitor!)
Chocolate Covered Giant Ants, £4.95 (Atta laevigata)
Mopani Worms, £11.95 (Imbrasia belina)
Oven-baked Tarantula, £15.99 (Haplopelma sp.)
Scorpion Vodka, £12.95 (Buthus martensii)
Thai Green Curry Crickets, £2.55 (Acheta domestica)

I think I’ll be making a trip with my girlfriend to Selfridges over Christmas to try some. Would you try any?

I think entomophagy is quite an interesting concept/topic because I remember reading (sorry, no citation at the moment) that the energy/protein conversion of insects is fairly good compared to most farmed animals. Are they tasty enough to eat as a regular dietary component? I shall report back…

*I found another site that listed more details about what I think are the same products as I couldn’t find them on the Selfridges website.