(Sauteed crickets on a bed of lettuce.)

(Cricket, meal worm and silk worm larvae fritters.  Served with shredded carrot, cilantro and ricotta.)

The visibly intact insects drew a strong vocal reaction, the mental image being too much to overcome for 1/3 of the group. The ground insect fritters that looked nothing like insects, diners found attractive, and even despite being conscious of the ingredients, the mental association was almost entirely disengaged.

Breaching the same subject is this project by a group in the UK. Here a 3D printer pumps out shapes that the designers suggest might change the way entomophagy is viewed. Developed by Susana Soares, the Food Bioscience Department (Dr. Kenneth Spears) at London South Bank University, UWE, Bristol ( Dr. Peter Walter), Pestival and Steak Studio (Penelope Kupfer).

http://www.susanasoares.com/index.php?id=82

Through my reading and research so far, I’d imagined the taste of both insects to have a nut-like flavor. My cooking partner and I started the experiment by tasting an unseasoned cricket… softer than I thought it would be, with the predicted nutty (woody, even) taste, followed by a pungent aftertaste. My co-chef described the experience as similar to eating asparagus. Then we each popped in a meal worm, which had a satisfyingly crunchy outside and a peanutty/earthy flavor. Here, you can see the insects in their packaged state, as they arrived from World Entomophagy.

To compliment the woody, dryness of the insects, we wanted to try a creamy recipe, and opted for a simple quiche. Second on our menu was a more flavor-packed recipe, a beet and meal worm curry, and then to finish the event off, we made a last minute decision to whip up a garlic cricket potato hash. The creamy quiche worked well, and the insects provided an enjoyable texture, though less flavor than I’d hoped. The curry was delicious, but probably too strong in flavor for the subtle insects; the meal worms were more of an attractive garnish, also adding texture here. The cricket hash was the star of the show – simple ingredients, and lots of crickets, the pungent flavor was most effective in this dish. We enjoyed a fruity riesling with the meal, a satisfying lightness for the hash especially.

For round two, we hope to incorporate a sweet dish, possibly a kettle-corn style preparation for the crickets.

Several influential characters are cited in the article. Paul Rozin at the University of Pennsylvania is quoted as saying, "It was always the other emotion,… Now it’s hot.” Valerie Curtis from the London School of Public Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says, “It’s in our everyday life… It determines who we’re going to kiss, who we’re going to mate with, who we’re going to sit next to. It determines the people that we shun, and that is something that we do a lot of.” Darwin is cited describing ‘the face of disgust, documented by Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne in his classic study of facial expressions in 1862, as if one were expelling some horrible-tasting substance from the mouth.’

In the article, disgust’s ‘power to affect behavior’ is revered, and a specific public relations campaign is mentioned as a positive use for this emotion. The antagonist in the youth-targeted skit is a man who makes candy from mud and worms, among other things. Here, a seemingly natural disgust of eating worms is employed. Though is this assumed reaction to worms mostly cultural? Are worms inherently dangerous to consume? Would the YouTube babys eating lemons (also referenced in the article) be equally likely to eat a worm? And might they be less likely to form Duchenne’s expression of disgust when they do?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/science/disgusts-evolutionary-role-is-irresistible-to-researchers.html

Illustration by Ron Barrett

They’re linking to the Symbiotic Households project on their blog, amongst other fantastic projects by the likes of Chris Woebkin and Auger Loizeau…

http://thegreenvillage.tumblr.com/post/3764169354/symbiotic-households-by-elliot-p-montgomery

http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2011/10/michael-jantzen-amazing-1981-modular-steel-dome-house.php

Jantzen’s own site is http://humanshelter.org/

http://www.eatyellowcake.com/

Supposedly, German courts ruled in 1978 that a man-made construction cannot be deemed a State territory, and therefore Sealand is not recognized, though I have not found confirmation of this ruling. More recently, after an attack and other difficulties, the Prince made attempts to sell the island. One offer seems to have come from The Pirate Bay, as a way to host servers on their own nation.

So where do we establish our understanding, our definition of the term ‘nation’? Can a nation only exist if it is observed by other nations’ rules?

http://www.sealandgov.org

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/14/guardian-and-observer-book-swap-how-to-take-part

Photo credit – http://www.flickr.com/photos/guardianbookswap/6210192113

1. Improved public transportation is an initial doorway to gentrification, as it makes an urban neighborhood more attractive to commuters.

2. Rebranding the neighborhood, usually an effort by real estate agents, is a way for marketers to disassociate an area with its recent past, and to give it a new face.

3. Affordance of meeting friends and wireless internet use, while sipping coffee that’s beyond your standard bodega offering, is a telltale sign of gentrification.

4. Co-opting or crossing the ethnic character is also a common effect of gentrification. Tortilla factories are turned into hip taco stands, and sites of factories bear the same names when they’re converted to clubs or art galleries.

5. Introduction of niche shops and specialty boutiques, like "cupcake focused bakeries," as Mont says, show the mounting success of the gentrification. These stores don’t cater to the lower levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but rather cultural novelties that offer entertainment over anything else.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11254463/1/how-to-gentrify-a-neighborhood.html