larvae for VHow do you take your larvae? With a little vinegar and salt? Perhaps some sour cream & onion?  Maybe a  mesquite grilled BBQ, with a lovely fruitwood piquant, is the key to your insect enjoyment? The Halverson boys are more simple, preferring their larvae amply coated with cheddar cheese powder, with a chaser of bacon & cheese-flavored crickets. Ah, now that’s a snack!

Grandma S. doesn’t have an obvious preference when it comes to crunchy insect delights. She ate both the crickets and larvae with equal gusto.

Grandma S eats larvae Grandma S eats cricket

Now, don’t tell her I said this, but I thought the cricket leg hanging from her lip when she was done was a bit ill-mannered. She had three impressionable five-year-olds watching her, after all. C’mon, have a little class when you eat your insects.

Deb eats cricketMe, the thoughtful parent responsible for providing this snack to my hungry troops at the nature center today? I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favorite. The bacon & cheese crickets had a lovely crunch, what with the wings and legs and all. But the more streamlined larvae went down easier, as one might expect. I barely had to chew them.

Daddy’s preference? Neither one. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get our favorite science teacher to partake of our buffet. “I love to catch insects,” he said, “I don’t eat them.”

Sheesh. Passing up a perfectly lovely snack. Hard to fathom, isn’t it?