FUN FACT FRIDAY: Using insects as a source of nutrition

In many parts of the world today, insects are a part of people's diets. Why? (Possible reasons might include: they are a good source of protein, easy to find, take up less space than cows, etc.) Their nutritional value is equal to if not better than our traditional meat choices. Which insect is the most nutritious? Which would be the easiest to rear? Try rearing mealworms, to use in bug recipes later.

Here is a recipe you might be brave enough to try (I however, am not).

Mealworm Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter
  1/2 cup brown sugar
  1/2 cup white sugar
  1 egg
  1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  1 cup all purpose flour
  1/2 teaspoon salt
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 cup oats
  1/2 cup chocolate chips
  1/4 cup mealworm flour
  

Cream butter well, then mix in sugar, egg, vanilla flour, salt, baking soda, chocolate chips, oats, and mealworm flour. Drop batter by the teaspoonful on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees farenheit. This recipe doesn't have much in the way of palpable insect content, but is an excellent way to introduce others (or yourself!) to entomophagy. Even many rather squeamish people will try mealworm cookies, since the cookie format doesn't look "gross" to most people, and since it is rather difficult to actually taste the mealworms, though they enrich the cookie with a somewhat nutty flavor and extra protein.

To make insect flour:
Spread your cleaned insects out on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Set your oven 200 degrees and dry insects for approximately 1-3 hours. When the insects are done, they should be fairly brittle and crush easily. Take your dried insects and put them into a blender or coffee grinder, and grind them till they are about consistency of wheat germ. Use in practically any recipe!

FUN FACT FRIDAY: The Twinkie turns 80!!!!

This does not mean you can go out and celebrate by eating a bunch of Twinkies! Thought it would be fun to pass along this little tidbit of how an unhealthy, empty calorie, no nutrition treat can become an American icon.... Perhaps this was the start of the junk food road????

Do you really believe that they have a shelf life? Or is this Hostess' way of trying to convince us that it isn't really all that bad for us?

Happy 80th birthday to the Twinkie

By Landon Hall

The Orange County Register

Published: Thursday, April 8, 2010 12:21 p.m. MDT

Twinkies do, in fact, have a shelf life — 25 days, to be precise, according to Hostess Foods. It only seems like the yellow sponge cake injected with vanilla cream filling lasts forever. Maybe because it's been around as long as anyone can remember.

The snack was invented on April 6, 1930, by a bakery manager named James Dewar in Schiller Park, Ill., just outside Chicago. His employer, the Continental Baking Co., was looking for a cheap snack to serve to Depression-hit consumers, and Dewar noticed that stacks of shortcake pans never got used outside the six-week summer strawberry season. So he experimented, and came up with a uniquely American creation. They were sold two for a nickel.

About 500 million Twinkies are now sold each year, and they're as beloved by children and snackaholics as they are loathed by nutritionists. A package of them was placed in the Millennium Time Capsule by President Clinton in 1999 (well, of course he would), and they've been (erroneously) blamed for causing murderous tendencies, thanks to the "Twinkie" criminal defense.

Are they good for you? Well, they're not terrible: One single cake has about 150 calories, 4.5 grams of fat and 19 grams of sugar. You could do worse.

But Hostess lays on the "it's not that bad for you" frosting a little thick. The company quotes "Mr. Twinkie" himself, Dewar, who purportedly ate three Twinkies a day for 50 years until his death in 1985 at age 88. "I fed them to my four kids and they feed them to my four grandchildren. Twinkies never hurt them."

Must have been fun growing up Dewar. "Apple? Whatya want one of those for? Twinkies built this house, and by God you're eating them."

Here are a few more tidbits about Twinkies:

— Dewar named the snack after a billboard he saw advertising Twinkle Toe Shoes, but never got paid royalties for his creation.

— The Twinkie originally had banana filling, but bananas were rationed during WWII, so vanilla was substituted. Customers liked it so much it stayed in there.

— The deep-fried Twinkie was invented at the Texas State Fair. Here's a recipe.

— In a nod to the supposed indestructibility of the snacks, the T.W.I.N.K.I.E. Project lists several silly experiments that can be performed on them, such as the "gravitational response test" (i.e. dropping one from a 6th-floor window).

More about the "Twinkie defense." It was coined by a journalist during the trial of Dan White, who shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. A psychiatrist for the defense testified that White's sudden all-junk-food diet was symptomatic of the depression that led him to snap and kill the men, not a cause of it. The word "Twinkie" was never actually used in court.

In other words, eating a Twinkie alone won't make you want to kill. So it's safe to have one, now and then.