Cricket Foods Review: Chips, Bars, and Powder!

Bugs have never made me squeamish. I was always the first to plunge my hands into a mud puddle at the elementary school playground, looking for worms, or the first to gingerly lift a daddy long legs out of my camp cabin by one long leg. So when I learned via the magical interweb that bugs are a rich untapped source of protein, I thought, "why not?"

Since turning vegetarian in 2014, I have had to consciously adjust to include more protein with tofu, legumes, mushrooms, etc. I haven't felt really constrained or weakened in anyway, but swearing off meat has allowed me to be more creative in the kitchen, and more resourceful.  So when it comes to crickets, once I hopped on the bandwagon, I was all in (and yes, while bugs are technically considered meat, many non-meat eaters, like myself, have made exceptions). And so, here is a review of my FOUR FAVORITE CRICKET PRODUCTS!! :)

Bitty

Bitty Flour in pretty packaging!

I began my venture into the practice of entomophagy with a pouch of Bitty flour hesitantly purchased by my skeptical mother. One of my first lessons in entomophagy (the ingestions of insects) was from Megan Miller, the founder of Bitty Foods through her TED Talk, "Are insects the future of food?" I was intrigued by the idea of cricket flour, so I convinced my mom to order some. A few days later, I was poring over a cookbook recipe for pancakes, trying to figure out how to insert cricket powder to the mix. I swapped it in for almond flour and ended up making dense, nutty, delicious blueberry cricket pancakes for my whole family. The only complaint? Too few blueberries!

Aketta

100% milled crickets powder

My experience with Aketta powder was somewhat serendipitous. I got my hands on a bag of their cricket powder by winning a radio contest (yes, the aforementioned Gastropod contest). In comparison to Bitty flour, Aketta powder was more gritty and nutty, most likely because it is a powder of 100% milled crickets, and not a fine four. Even still, it worked great in chocolate chip cookies and pancakes!

Chirps

Chirps in 3 flavors: Sea Salt, Cheddar, and BBQ

"Chirps" maybe the most addictive cricket product out there. Literally cricket chips, these taste
deliciously regular when dipped in guacamole, salsa, hummus, etc. But don't be confused by their snack nature, these chips supply a serious dose of protein. As Chirp's tagline says, "one cricket per chip!" What's more, Chirps are made by company Six Foods, which was started by three female Harvard grads right out of school! Girl power!

Chapul Bars

Chapul "Chaco" flavor 12-bar box

I had been wanting to taste cricket protein bars for a long time, so when I started to run cross country and had an excuse to eat protein bars, I bought a box of 12 "Chaco" Chapul bars. Wow these were good. Very dense and rich, but chocolatey and sweetened by dates. I appreciated the volume of choppend peanuts and the protein-per-serving (eight grams!).
Then, I went to my local Stop & Shop, and by happenstance discovered they carried cricket products and Chapul bars were one of them (Bitty flour was the other)!! I was so excited to see them, because this means that these snacks have become national conventional merchandise! While my call-to-action still stands, I was so excited to see this progress already! And since this discovery, I have also tried the "Aztec" chocolate, caffeine, and cayenne flavor, and it was so good! I ate it in the last period of school and was energized enough to run four miles 30 minutes later!

I realized that insects in snack form have the amazing potential to, not only provide more protein to flexible vegetarians and vegans, but also to the malnourished and starving children and families of the world!

Have you ever eaten a bug before? If not, now is the time to try!! You can find all these awesome products online, and Chapul and Bitty products in your local Stop & Shop! If you try them, let me know what you think in the comments!!

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Gourmanda

Video: Mother Earth says Go Vegan/Vegetarian

I found this video a couple days ago and wanted to share it with you all. It is beautiful and scary and true all at once. Share this post with someone considering going vegetarian/vegan, or anyone for that matter. We all need to start voting with our forks if we want to save our earth!

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Gourmanda

A Look Back at 2015 Through Food Cartoons

Hello Everyone!

I hope you are all having a nice holiday season. As 2015 comes to an end, I wanted to reflect on the year through the lens of ever-satirical New Yorker food cartoons 

The issue of Genetically Modified Organisms in food production drew mass attention this year. While amazing groups like Vani Hari's Food Babe Army worked hard this year to bring change, there is still a lot to be done. I loved this cartoon for how it poked fun at the whole issue. It was an interesting interpretation...

"Foodie": pretentious snob or thoughtful gastronomer? I'd like to go with the latter, but regardless, "foodie-ism" spread like wildfire this year, especially on platforms like Instagram with the growth of the "foodstagram" community.

These two cartoons made me laugh. I cut both of them out of the magazine and they now hang on my bulletin board above my desk. I hope they make you laugh too.

With the rise in popularity this year of raw-vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, non-G.M.O. diets makes this cartoon a very accurate picture of what it's like to eat in 2015. I know that when my family gets together, the cook must first create a venn diagram to figure out what dish could satisfy everyone's dietary restrictions and preferences. 

And finally, a cartoon so accurate that I might as well be that man. Darn avocados! So delicious, yet so elusive. Has an avocado ripeness timer been invented? If not, I think I've found my next project... 

Cheers to a year of much more!!

Thank you all,

Gourmanda

All images courtesy of TheNewYorker.com 

The Bugs in our Bellies

"Probiotic" is a word that I learned back in 2011.  I was interviewing a cheese saleswoman at the local farmers market and she was describing their camembert cheese as probiotic. "It's basically the opposite of an anti-biotic," she told ten-year-old me. "It's the good bacteria, not the bad bacteria."

credit: sandhyamanoj.com

Fast forward six years and I am a junior in high school studying the effect of probiotic bacteria on our diet and mood. I am part of the high school science research program and have read tons of studies and articles on how the bugs in our bellies can effect our overall health and mental state.

How did I get here? It seems as if the microbes in that delicious camembert cheese infected me. Ever since then stories of their (literally) mind-boggling properties have followed me and piqued my interest.

In 2012, one of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab, aired an episode dedicated to Guts. They orated on the discovery of digestion, interviewed a man who battled with his gut (actually a family friend, Jon Reiner), and, most intrguingly, chatted with researcher John Cryan of the University College Cork who explained how eating probiotics can decrease anxiety and depression in mice. This amazing research led to an outbreak of similar literature in the "psychobiology" world and is causing people to think twice about the significance of the bacteria in our bellies.

After my first exposure, I consumed article after article, presentation after presentation, and book after book about the role of our microbiota. 

credit: The New York Times

• "Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself" by Carl Zimmer
• "The Scientists Who Want to Fix America's Guts" by John Swansburg
• "Missing Microbes" by Martin Blaser
• "Mind-altering Microbes: How the Microbiome Effects Brain and Behavior" by Elaine Hsaio
• "Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?" by Peter Andrey Smith

And just recently, due to all the hype around this exciting area of science, The Museum of Natural History in New York opened an exhibit "The Secret World Inside You."

Here is an excerpt from the exhibit description: 

"Our bodies are home to approximately 100 trillion bacteria living inside us and on us—a vast community known as the microbiome. The Secret World Inside You explores the rapidly evolving science that is revealing the complexities of the human microbiome and reshaping our ideas about human health, offering new perspectives on common health problems including allergies, asthma, and obesity. "

So, how has all this research effected me? Well, I think my meals can speak for me. Today for breakfast I had homemade granola with greek yogurt, for lunch I ate sourdough bread sandwich with pickles, and with my dinner I drank plain kefir. 

Cheers to our microbiota!

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Gourmanda

Food for Thought: Bacon Causes Cancer

Did you guys see Time Magazine's feature article about the detrimental health effects of eating bacon and other processed food? If not, scoot on over to read it and then share your thoughts in the comments.

Vegetarians: Has an enemy been exposed?

Carnivores: Has a friend been offended?

Everyone else: What do you think? Would you change your eating habits based on scientific research, even if the food in question was a staple so strong that there are entire Facebook communities created around it?

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Gourmanda 

Working at the Farmers Market

Every Saturday morning, I wake up at 6:45am, throw on my green t-shirt, and head down to Pleasantville to intern at the farmers market.

I love waking up to work with a smiling staff of volunteers eager to make the market's environment as accommodating and lively as possible. As media intern, I post a weekly collage and video to Facebook to get patrons pumped about the market. I photograph the weekly splendorous harvest of corn, apples, cheese, bread rolls, fish, kale, etc., and use the photos in my weekly posts.

Working at the Pleasantville Farmers Market has taught me about what it means to run a non-profit, about the life of a farmer, about how to take the most yummy pictures, about how to change money, about how to set up a tent, the list goes on and on.

So if you're ever in Westchester County, stop by for a "delicious good time" at the best and biggest market around!!
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Gourmanda

Food Product to Try: Blue Hill Savory Yogurt

saveur.com

The first time I heard about Blue Hill's new savory yogurt, I knew I had to try it. The yogurt is your average joe yogurt, except for one thing, it's comes in sweet potato flavor!!

In recent years, the yogurt industry has gone bananas trying to reel in customers with every dessert-turned-yogurt flavor you can think of. Some examples from Yoplait include Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Red Velvet Cupcake, and Boston Cream Pie.

But the minds at the world famous farm-to-table restaurant Blue Hill (Dan Barber et al.) are going against the grain and flavoring their unconventional dairy products with root and vine vegetables.

I took a trip to my local Mrs. Greens and bought a cup of Sweet Potato flavored yogurt. I immediately spooned it into my mouth upon arriving home and was met with a slightly salty and umami taste that almost made me forget I was eating yogurt. But then I came to my senses and realized that I didnt like this non-sweet yogurt. I added a little honey and some walnuts and tried it again. Much better.

The verdict: Based on my taste analysis of one flavor, this yogurt would go great in sauces and marinades, but maybe not by itself. I blame it on my tastebuds's affinity for sweet-tasting yogurt. Definitely give a try, and let me know what you think!

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Gourmanda