Last week, I held a giveaway for a copy of the book Edible by Daniella Martin.  The book covers the world of edible insects and the increasing role that insects may play in the future (and perhaps not so distant) human diet worldwide.  There’s also a section on edible insect varieties and some recipes so you can try your hand at edible insect cookery.  It’s a great book, and to those of you who didn’t win, I would highly recommend that you buy a copy or check it out at your local library.  It’s a really fun book and well worth the read.

The winner, chosen by a random number generator from all the entries, is becomingcliche!  I’ll e mail you to get your address so I can mail you the book.  Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to everyone who shared the insect dishes they’ve tried or the reasons why they haven’t yet sampled insects intentionally.  I love reading about what people have tried or want to try and I’m always fascinated by the many excuses people have for not eating insects.  Confession: I am not an insect eater myself.  The texture just doesn’t work for me at all.  Texture drives most of my food choices (and makes me largely vegetarian – I am SO squeamish about meat textures!), and the insects I’ve tried so far sadly don’t have the right sort of texture.  However, eating insects is healthy, more sustainable than most other meat production, and could become a hugely important part of our diet in my lifetime.  I want to keep trying bugs, so I am planning to get some cricket flour sometime and bake with it, just to see how it goes.  Cricket flour eliminates the textural issues I have with whole crickets and who can resist a delicious cookie or cake?  And dry roasted big butt ants are still high on my list of things I want to try if I ever get my hands on them.  Someday…

Been super busy again recently, but I hope to get some more blogging done this week. And if anyone happens to be in the Raleigh, NC area this Saturday, I’ll be at NC Museum of Natural Sciences’ BugFest in the afternoon!  Check out the posters made by the kids participating in my Dragonfly Detectives project in the Citizen Science Center on the first floor of the Nature Research Center – they’re doing a phenomenal job!  I’ll also be giving a talk on dragonflies at 3PM in the Windows on the World on the 3rd floor of the Nature Exploration Center.  BugFest is awesome!  Even if you don’t come see me, it’s WELL worth the trip.

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