Thursday, January 24, 2008

Another country heard from

There's a lot of things to talk about, I need to blog them but for the moment here's a thought for the day.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012308EB.shtml

I'm slowly starting to get ready to research the underlying issues and realities around food-production and the ways that entomophagy can fit into a paradigm of living sanely on the planet. This desired research may have to cover a vast amount of territory, including water consumption; efficient conversion of plant foods into edible proteins; the quirks and patterns that shape food preferences and biases; animal flatulence; and stuff like that. The above article is about the loss of topsoil, which I would never have thought was a problem but yup, it seems to be.

More soon.

Friday, January 4, 2008

A New Challenge for the New Year

Greetings Everybody. Happy 'O8.

There are a lot of good challenges facing me and my little company this year and I'll write about them soon. I promise.

For the moment, I've got a challenge for you, especially those of you in or near American cities. As I've mentioned, several small markets here in Providence offer three kinds of insects in the frozen food section. I'd love to hear about what's sold in NYC, or DC, or LA, Chicago, El Paso, Denver, places like that. I just learned about an African market in Burlington VT [not most people's idea of a very diverse part of the country] that sold dried caterpillars or grubs not long ago.

My visits to both Chinatowns [if one can still use that word in this day and age] in New York turned up practically nothing. There was plenty of exotic foods, especially in Flushing, Queens, but nothing in the way of insects. Inquiries went nowhere. The same happened in Boston.

Is it possible that a smaller city like Providence has the bugs but larger cities don't?? Seems really unlikely. It's more likely that I don't know where to look.

I can offer small rewards -- we could easily work out just what that would mean. But just as I need insect hunters to beat the bushes throughout this country and world, so do I need pairs of feet through the aisles of stores here and there.

Whaddaya Say??