Eating bugs

I've eaten a good bit of insects ants, never spiders but grubs bite off the pincher head, I ate a live minnow one time swallowed it whole. Probably a bad death for that little guy my friends at the time laughed mwha
 
When I was younger I was all into the Bushcraft scene. I had gotten a few survival skills books and would camp every weekend. All the books said how great insects were in a survival situation so I was curious. I gathered a handful of grubs and crickets from under a downed tree. Took me a good 30 minutes to work up the nerve to eat them.

Eventually I gut up and sliced the head off a grub and popped it in my mouth. Started chewing and noticed the texture and consistency was like nothing I've ate before. At first I thought I was going to spit it out because it seemed like my body just didn't want that shit inside of me. But I was able to finish chewing and get it down. The cricket was a bit easier, the initial shock factor was gone. I pulled off his legs and down the hatch. I ended up putting the grubs back and just eating the last of the crickets.

I imagine for a survival situation it would be no problem now, but don't see myself doing it for any other reason.
 
Yeah the grubs are rubbery the outer skin is weird. I believe some tossed into a stew or soup wouldn't be too bad. Collect ants with a straw and stir fry or add to soup
 
I know this is an old thread, but ive been looking into it a lot lately. Ive eaten fried mealworms and crickets, theyre pretty tasteless and really just crunchy. But id say theyre a great survival food, since theyre abundant and easy to catch and high in protein. Ive read that caterpillars are a bad idea unless you know what type they are since many can be poisonous. A lot of people cant even hunt with a modern rifle or shotgun, let alone a bow and arrow or a bushcraft weapon, and even trapping takes some skill as dar as placement, camoflauge and design go, not to mention that field dressing, butchering and preserving meat is becomimg a lost skill. But anyone can lift some rocks or pieces of wood and collect bugs. You can take a bottle, cut the top part off and put it into bottom half of the bottle to act as a funnel, and put it into the ground. Bugs fall in but arent smarrtenough to get out. Get some of those and youd have a source of daily protein.
The one tip I have as far as preparing them is to hold them without food for 24-48 hours to purge the poop out of them. I fried some mealworms I got at a petstore without doing that. It took me a couple batches to realize the black gunk all over the frying pan and stuck onto them was feces.
 
I just got back from a trip to Red River Gorge in Kentucky... and holy shit was the place crawling with cicadas and katydids. They kept landing into our campfire, so I took the burned cans from my companions meals and roasted both in the can on the coals. I got them nice and crispy while rolling them around the coals with a stick. Then we just took them out of the can, pulled off the wings, legs, and heads, and ate them. They were good as a snack with our bourbon, but needed maybe some salt and garlic powder. They both tasted very different. The cicadas tasted like dry, bland, chicken nuggets. The katydids surprisingly tasted like roasted peas. Both were very crunchy and not bad at all. I recommend seasoning them and you are good to go. This is the time of year for both, so catch some and chow down. You could probably trap a lot of them by utilizing a flashlight and a mosquito net. Or just be vigilant around your campfire as we were.
 
outskirts said:
Well I managed to catch enough crickets to be worth while. And a few locusts too.
I've read that you should give them a quick boil in water for 2 minutes to kill any parasites they may have, then pluck off the wings, legs and antennas, then you can roast them and even grind them into a flour.
I think for my first go of it I'm gonna make potato, zucchini, cricket skewers with the veggies and crickets I have on hand. I still have to find a way to catch more crickets and more efficiently. I'm gonna try a few homemade traps.
I might as well, the fields here are full of them chirping this time of year.
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Yes definitely always cook your bugs. Grasshoppers are delicious but a lot of them are carriers for tapeworm which won't help our hunger issued.
 
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