don't swat the small stuff (eat it instead)

It's not every day that I'll post an entry about food—granted, I probably spend more money on food than anything else (living in Manhattan and not cooking very often can get expensive), but I'm not the most adventurous eater.

Which is why I found this article by Jennifer Gampbell in today's N.Y. Times so fascinating. The article is about the cuisine of the Ubon region of Thailand... where bugs are a staple of the diet.

I'll let the article speak for itself. First, a look at what it's like to eat a fried scorpion (!):

The appendages were suitably crunchy (except for the unchewable claws), although rancid frying oil and too much salt spoiled the overall experience. Having thus conquered my squeamishness, I had some grasshoppers (crispy) and crickets (slightly soft but small enough to eat quickly) and asked my Thai friend whether fried bugs always tasted this greasy and salty.

There's also this unintentionally hilarious passage first about health conscious bug cooking, followed by a description of what sounds like the most disgusting dish I could ever imagine:

Health consciousness has reached the frying pans and woks of Ubon insect chefs; many now cook with dry heat instead of gallons of oil. I ordered a small plate of mounded grayish-brown flies (nobody knew their English nomenclature) that had been pan-fried with slivers of lemon grass. To accompany them I chose a type of som tam made with khanom chin (thin rice flour noodles) with the standard additives of lemon juice, palm sugar, peanuts and dried shrimp.

Hey, maybe it's me—when I'm feeling up for something exotic, as I was this morning, I go for the rye bagel instead of sesame seed. But I don't see myself popping "grayish-brown flies" of undisclosed origin into my mouth anytime soon, with or without lemon grass garnish.