"Hi, My Name is Lena and I eat bugs"

No this is not some type of AA confession but something that I realized I am getting more and more okay with as time goes on...

Now my friends in India just posted a blog about how they became vegetarians when they moved to India...I must confess...this blog is going in a completely opposite direction of theirs but still...it will make for some good reading (I hope :)

As Americans I know most of us get a little squeamish to the idea of eating bugs...but what I find is that Americans are probably the only people on earth who think eating bugs are gross...notice I didn't say they are the only ones on earth who don't eat bugs...cause even though we like to think we don't, we all eat some...either on accident or on purpose...

I did a little research...just in case you are curious... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272_v121/ai_13953408/?tag=content;col1

How did my "revelation" come about....well...if you read my blog you have probably noticed that I have had my share of bug stories...bugs in my popcorn kernels, bugs in my kitchen, d-worming medication and the works...

What you don't know is that I knowingly eat bugs on occasion...not because I want to, but because it is a part of life...

For example...I eat ants at least twice a week...not because I like the way they taste but rather because at least twice a week there is some poor little ant carcass stuck to the side of my matoke at lunch and rather than be an annoying white person, who will waste perfectly good food because their is a dead ant stuck to it, I usually just cover it with some sauce and munch away...a little extra protein right??

Today however, I think I hit a low point in my bug consumption....and NO i didn't buy a cup of grasshoppers on the side of the road to much on...

I opened up a much anticipated box of corn meal, and well...the contents practically crawled out of the box, into my mixing bowl...

My first instinct...and probably to most of you reading this will come as some surprise but my first instinct wasn't to throw the box away but rather to try and pick those bugs out with a spoon...but once I started my endeavor I realized there were to many for my spoon method to be successful...

Instinct 2...and no...it still wasn't to throw the box out...rather it was to use my metal strainer to sift them out...well...lets just say my metal strainer doesn't have small enough holes...but it did catch some...which was when I realized there were three different types of bugs taking up residence in my corn meal and not just one like I originally thought....there were some brown ones -I'm guessing they were baby weevils, long white ones that looked a little like centipedes just not as gross, and really tiny ones that looked like walking pieces of grain.

Instinct 3...find a smaller strainer...which I did at my neighbors house, but well...it was a little too small so not even the corn meal went through...

Instinct 4...use the metal strainer over and over until it comes up clean...then at least I know I got all the adults and teenager sized bugs...the rest...well...what could they hurt right?? After all, this is going in the oven and they will all die anyway!

So that is just what I did! Anyone up for dinner at my house tonight???!! haha...

It was fine...don't worry...I didn't die!

As I finished up my meal, I came to a new juncture in the my "I eat bugs" road...what to do with the rest of the box of corn meal?? Toss it, keep it....humm....lets keep it...I repeated Instinct steps 1-4 but instead of killing them by fire, this time I decided I would put the sifted corn meal into a bag and freeze em to death...so at this very moment, my visitors are dying a slow and hopefully agonizing death in my freezer...

The next step....buy a medium sized strainer so that once they have all frozen to death, I can sift them out and enjoy some corn bread free of bug carcasses!

Ahhh...isn't life an adventure?? It sure would be boring if everything worked out perfectly every time!