Red mud, rice wine and grasshoppers
After hiking 20 kilometers in 6 hours through pouring rain, sloshing through deep, thick, red mud, I felt like I could eat anything. And then the plate of grasshoppers appeared. I am always game for trying the unusual and offbeat, so six scrawny legs attached to a little locust with disproportionately large eyes seemed no big deal.
In the event, it was a little disappointing. The grasshoppers ended up tasting like any number of other things deep-fried: they taste like what you put on them, or what they are fried in. In this case, I suspect the oil used to fry the tiny insects was a couple of years past its ‘use-by’ date, so the resulting taste was even more off-putting than being left with tiny legs stuck between your teeth. The locals were digging in, though. Perhaps this is some form of community service, as harvesting the insect also keeps them off the rice, in addition to serving as a low-cost beer snack.
