pogoism

After what was quite a dull first week back at work, what with there being nothing to do, last night I spent some time with my mate Alonso. We went to Genghis Grill (whose idea it was to name a restaurant after someone who murdered millions of people, I don’t know) in Sparks. It was an interesting concept for a restaurant – when you go in, you get given a bowl and then directed to go to a salad bar type area. You fill up your bowl with meat, vegetables, spices and sauce, and then hand it to the kitchen staff who grill it, and add noodles or rice.

After that, we headed back to Alonso’s. We sampled a Mexican delicacy – chapulines.

From Wikipedia:

Chapulines are grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium. They are considered a delicacy by many Mexicans. They are collected only at certain times of year (from their hatching in early May through the late summer/early autumn). They are thoroughly cleaned and washed out, then toasted on a comal (clay cooking surface) with garlic and lemon juice and sal de gusano to create a sour-spicy-salty taste. Some people will toast their chapuline with chiles, but most vendors and cooks will tell you that chiles are used to cover for stale chapulines and only show up in the poorest quality grasshoppers. Chapulines are available only in certain parts of Mexico, the state and city of Oaxaca being best known. They are available in varying sizes, small to large. They are known to have been used as food for over 3000 years.

Surpisingly, they didn’t actually taste that bad – they taste like lemon. However, I was expecting them to be crunchy and hard throughout, but after my first bite I felt a squishy interior, which wasn’t particularly pleasant. But anyway, I can cross grasshopper eating off my list of things to do before I die.

The rest of the weekend was filled with cleaning our very messy post-Christmas apartment, and getting rid of the Christmas tree, which was much more of a hassle than Emily or I had anticipated!

Photo via Flickr user daftgirly.