Alternative protein

[hiccups]

So, we've talked about eating all kinds of things in a survival scenario... horses, cats, dogs, snakes, rabbits, horses, deer, elk, waterfowl, goats, horses and more. I haven't seen any mention of one of the most plentiful protein sources around: bugs. (Okay, I think there was some joking about eating weevils in our wheat...)

I was just wondering if anyone has included learning about preparing and eating insects in their preps? And if so, could you share links/resources?

[LEVE]

I've added a whole lot of beans... good thing I love 'em I've just enjoyed a couple of bowls of 13 bean soup and wish I could eat a couple of more....

I guess if John the Baptist could eat Locust... so could we.

[signseeker]

Yeah, let's eat the annoying, bad animals first. I suppose if you drown them in honey, you could choke them down. :ack2:

[LEVE]

I suppose if you drown them in honey, you could choke them downJust think of them as... crunchy caramel corn.

[hiccups]

Actually, I'm imagining I'd prepare them in some way where they didn't look like bugs anymore if I could. And, yeah, bugs aren't plan B, or C, or even Q. It's nice to have a last resort, though, no?

[thermocouple]

Man vs Wild. That guy eats the nastiest stuff, its hilarious. The kids and I watch that all the time. Maybe one day we'll have to eat such things. Mrs Thermocouple thinks the guy is an idiot, the rest of us just like watching him do all of his psychotic antics. I think he may get more people killed than saved with his crazy "survival" choices, but it's entertaining all the same.

[signseeker]

Dude, Bear Grylls rocks!

By the way, if you combine grains and seeds or grains and legumes... don't you get a complete protein? It doesn't have to boil down to animals all the time.

[waif69]

Yeah, let's eat the annoying, bad animals first. I suppose if you drown them in honey, you could choke them down.
We should eat liberals?

[Baconator]

I'd imagine if I got hungry enough, 'maggots' would suddenly become 'grubs'. Grasshoppers aren't bad. It's the legs and wings, really. Anything can become palatable with the proper application of barbecue sauce and cheese.

I recall some war movie I watched years ago. A drunk soldier standing is a south-east asian bar telling his buddy "Hey, this guacamole is really good!" Buddy says "You're in Asia. Do you really think that's guacamole?" Turns out he's holding a giant beetle upside down, eating it with chips!

[sunsinger]

I was having a conversation years ago with a friend about preparing for the future, survival, etc. She had been in a conversation with a lady who had survived Germany WWII. The WWII survivor had said that the most important thing to have was oil. If you had oil even the bugs tasted good.

[mgriffith]

I'd imagine if I got hungry enough, 'maggots' would suddenly become 'grubs'. Grasshoppers aren't bad. It's the legs and wings, really. Anything can become palatable with the proper application of barbecue sauce and cheese.


Why would you need bugs is you have BBQ sauce and cheese? ( I know you were kidding ).

I remember going through jungle survival school, and the instructor was telling us about all the different bugs to eat. I said I wasn't eatin' no $%^# bugs. He said if I got hungry enough I would. I told him I'd kill him and eat HIM, but wasn't going to eat no #$%^ bugs.

Actually, if you think about it, yes bugs do have a lot of protein, but how many handfuls of ants do you have to eat? How many grasshoppers? Just one or two is not going to make any difference. The survivor guys make it look like you eat a spider, you're good for the next 24 hours. It doesn't work like that.

I've seen people starving to death. They will eat ANYTHING. Anything to try and fill their stomachs and stop the pain. You can bet they have already eaten every cockroach they could find, and they are still starving. I have seen people eating dirt and feces to try and survive. It has to be the slowest, most painful way to die. The best thing you can do is prepare so you don't get into that situation. The prophets say mothers will slit the throats of their children and drink their blood. You don't understand how true that is.

The only good part is when the people are starving like that, you can get them to do ANYTHING for a few scraps of food. You may not think so, but you can. Again, you don't want to be placed in that situation. Most civilized people think they would never do that, but I have seen it and, sadly, experienced it myself. Do don't understand the power of food and the will of people to live.

Mark

[celebrate life]

EMERGENCY SURVIVAL FOOD

Ant Flambe
Rating: 7.8 Backpack: Yes Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Ants
aluminum foil
heat source

How to Prepare:
Heat a piece of aluminum foil over a flame. Gently lay your hand or
sleeve over an active ant hill. Wait for the ants to crawl onto you.
Gently brush the ants onto the heated foil, and eat quickly without
chewing. The heated foil serves to quickly kill the ants, not cook
them. Killing the ants prevents any nasty ant bites, and lessens the
probability of your survival meal from crawling out of your mouth.


Bee Soup
Rating: 7.4 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Bees
Old, smelly meat
Pointed stick
Tin can
Water
Open fire

How to Prepare:
Capture bees by placing old, smelly meat on point of stick. Fill can
with water. Lean stick against can so tip is above center of can. Bees
flock to stick, fall in water & drown. When can is full of desired
amount of bees, boil 10 minutes (to destroy bee venom). Makes
protein-rich soup.

Berry Pudding
Rating: 3 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: 1-2 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Berries
2 worms
Clovers for Garnish

How to Prepare:
Mash the berries with a stick on a piece of bark. Add the worms and
mash some more. Scrap the pudding onto a leaf and garnish with clovers.


Boiled Cattail Root
Rating: N/A Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
cattail roots
water
salt

How to Prepare:
Wash the roots. Set water to a rolling boil and
add enough salt.
Drop roots in the water and cook untill ready.


Broiled Grasshopper/Cricket
Rating: 5.8 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
crickets or grasshoppers (as many as you can catch)
open fire

How to Prepare:
Find a stick or something to hold the grasshoppers with. Then you
lightly roast them over a fire. To eat, you can remove wings and back
legs or just eat the whole thing.


cattail flour
Rating: 5 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
blooming cattail heads
something to roll the heads on.

How to Prepare:
take the blooming cattails and set them down on a piece of paper or
something, roll them around and you will begin to see a yellow powder.
substitute for any flour based recipe.WARNING: if you are alergic to
pollen do not use this recipe. the yellow powder is pollen.


Cattail Supreme
Rating: 4.8 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: 1-2 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
cattails
water

How to Prepare:
Wet the the entire cattail and cook over open flame or boil.


Cremed Grasshopper
Rating: 2.5 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: 1-2 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
fully grown grasshoppers 2 c boiling water
Outside layer of a tree root--careful, some roots are poisonous!

How to Prepare:
Gather up to fifteen grasshoppers. Heat over fire and then put into
boiling water. Peel off about 3, 5 inch. strips of the tree root. Boil
about 10 min.


Earth Worm Spaghetti
Rating: 6 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: 1-2 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
10-15 good sized earthworms
water

How to Prepare:
Boil worms till dead. Just drop them into boiling water like you would
lobster and cook for about 2 min then serve. Tastes good kind of like
fish.


Fried Worms
Rating: N/A Backpack: Yes Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Fresh dug worms, any size - ALIVE
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Butter

How to Prepare:
Judy Blume wasn't kidding, these are good. Heat up you frying pan, add
a tsp of butter. When pan reaches correct temp, add the live worms,
stir fry and add your spices. Worms are done when they stop moving and
cooked thruout.


Honeycomb
Rating: N/A Backpack: Yes Effort: average Serves: 1-2 Prep time:

Ingredients:
Honeycomb

How to Prepare:
Track down a bee hive. Often placed in old hollow trees. Knock down
with long branch and vacate the area for little while.
When you are to return dress with thick clothes and beanie, or
stockings over face.
Smash bee hive and eat honeycomb!


Honeysuckle Nectar
Rating: 9.8 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
honeysuckle bush
white honeysuckle flowers

How to Prepare:
Find a honeysuckle bush blooming in late spring or early summer. Choose
the white flower. Pluck them from the bush and bite the bottom of the
flower off and spit out. Suck the nectar from the flower. Very tasty so
you may be standing quite some time sucking nectar. I don't know
whether they could be placed in a bag and stored but I would give it a
try


Hot Eels
Rating: 10 Backpack: No Effort: average Serves: 1-2 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Eel 1
Pepper 3 1/2 tbsp
Salt 1/2 tsp
Bannock 1
Lard 1/4 cup
Paprika 2/3 tsp

How to Prepare:
First you must catch an eel. They are usually found at the bottom of
fresh water rivers, streams etc. After you have caught the eel skin it
and gut it. Then slice it up into long fat pieces, about 2 inches wide
each. Fry the eel in deer fat- or any other kind that you have-until
it?s a light brown color. Then season it with the pepper and salt. Now
take the eel off the fire and wrap it up in the bannock. Melt the
butter, then add the paprika and poor it over the Eel.


mashed cattail
Rating: 10 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
cattails
seasonings to taste
( i use an italian mix from sams)
boiling water

How to Prepare:
grab some cattails from the base as close to the bottom as possible.
you will pull up some tubers, they smell really bad but find some clean
water to wash them off. cut the tubers off, peel them, then remove all
material down to the core. take the removed material minus the core,
and boil with some water. makes an excellent sub for pashed potatoes.


Potato & Grasshopper
Rating: 4.7 Backpack: No Effort: average Serves: 3-4 Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
2-4 potatos
2 Tb butter
10-15 grasshoppers
salt& pepper

How to Prepare:
Melt butter in large frying pan. Then slice potatos 1/8 thick and add
to pan. Then add grasshoppers with head and wings removed. Fry on low
heat until potato is golden brown and soft in the middle. season with
salt and pepper to taste


Roasted Grubs
Rating: 7.8 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
grubs or other larvae
open fire & rock

How to Prepare:
Dig up grubs or other larvae. Set on hot rock near fire for 5 minutes
or so, until crunchy.


Roasted Pine Nuts or Sunflower Seeds
Rating: N/A Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
pine nuts or
sunflower seeds

How to Prepare:
To gather pine nuts, shake trees and the nuts will fall from the pine
cones--or scout around for them on the ground.You can also use
sunflower seeds for this.Roast them in a pan or pot over a hot
fire--stirring constantly so that they don't burn.To shuck or hull the
seed covers, place the hot seeds between two damp cloths and roll
slightly or twist.


Roasted Slug and Boiled Snail
Rating: 9.2 Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
slugs
snails
water

How to Prepare:
After catching slugs and snails, find a pointed stick and a can to boil
water. Place snails in boiling water, heat for about 5 minutes or until
dead. While snails are boiling, thrust pointed stick through the slugs
and roast over the open fire. Roast until crispy on the outside.


Sassafras Tea
Rating: N/A Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
Sassafras root
pot
water
fire
Tang

How to Prepare:
cut roots from tree, wash clean, cut and place into pot of water. Bring
to a boil and continue to add water as needed until liquid turns
slightly dark. Add 2 tablespoons of Tang and enjoy.


Slammin Catfish
Rating: 9 Backpack: No Effort: average Serves: any Prep time: 1-30m

Ingredients:
1 fresh caught catfish
campfire
fillet knife
starving sensation
guts to gut fish
pioneer efforts

How to Prepare:
Catch catfish, gut it..slam on top of fire or extend from thin branch
over fire until flaky. Enjoy! But watch for bones!!


Sweet Yucca Paste
Rating: N/A Backpack: No Effort: easy Serves: any Prep time: 60m+

Ingredients:
fruits from a broad leaf yucca plant--they grow on a stalk that
comes up from the center of the plant

How to Prepare:
Bake in a covered pit or slow burning fire--as long as you
can--overnight is best.Peel off the skin and remove the seeds and
fiber. What is left is a sweet paste that can be eaten or shaped into
bars and dried for more emergency food for later.


Camprecipes.com

[signseeker]

:svengo:

[Noahs ARK]

Ach. Ach. Ach.

If I have to eat bugs, I'm cooking them over my paint can and will then pulverize their dried out & cooked little bodies into a powder. Mix the powder with honey and swallow.