The Good Life
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Jiminy Crickets By Vivienne Pearson
The delicious looking cupcake in front of me would have been eaten ages ago, had I not known its full ingredient list. Instead, I hesitate while a battle of logic versus instinct wages in my brain. It’s neither the buckwheat flour nor the maple syrup that have caused me to pause; it’s the crickets that make me hesitate. Yes, crickets.
There are no legs or antennae sticking out of the cake. The crickets are powdered. Farmed for three months, lured into hibernation by lowered temperatures, frozen (at which point they die), then washed, baked and ground. But, however finely ground they are, there is no getting round the fact that there are crickets in my cake. Insects. Crunchy in their natural state. I don’t eat insects, unless you count the odd fly during a bushwalk. I have contemplated crickets as a food source before – but it doesn’t really help me in my cake-eating mission – as they were a food source for my pet frogs. I am not a frog and, as I might have mentioned, I don’t eat insects. But, truth is that there is only around three grams of powdered cricket in the cake staring up at me. I reason that such a small amount is not going to be noticeable and I am right. I enjoy my delicious cake. This initial hurdle over, I move onto the actual powder. It’s worth being clear that no-one is expected to eat the cricket powder neat. The idea is to include it in smoothies and baked dishes, or sprinkled over granola or a salad.
In the name of thorough research, I will not Vivienne contemplates a cricket-powered cupcake. stop until I’ve tried the powder in its pure form.
OOTY
‘People say it tastes like almond, or popcorn,’ says Pedro. I try it and disagree with him. I find the smell earthy and the taste like a stale spicemix. These are not sensations I would seek out, but are far less disagreeable than I had feared. The big question is, why? Why, apart from giving yourself psychological challenge (or being on Survivor), would you choose to eat insects? The answers are surprisingly plentiful. Eating insects, a normal part of life in some parts of Asia and Africa, is potentially part of the solution to many of the world’s problems. Crickets can be farmed in incredibly low-impact ways compared to other animals. [I can attest to the fact that they eat hardly anything (a fresh piece of carrot daily sustained them nicely until they were fed to my frogs). You eat every part of them (like nose-to-tail eating but let’s get technical and call it antennaeto-ovipositor eating). They are a rich source of protein – 15g of powdered cricket yields 10g of protein (about the same as an egg) – and are high in Vitamin B12. A vegetarian who restricted their diet to avoid the environmental impact of farming meat might consider adding crickets to their diet. Maybe, as well as pescatarians and lacto-ovovegetarians, we’ll one day have insectarians? Pedro has used himself as a tester. ‘I eat a diet that is pretty much plant-based plus crickets,’ he says. ‘Because I train a lot – jiu-jitsu, strength training and surfing – I eat more than 50g of crickets a day. A year on, I feel great.’ Pedro is one quarter of Grilo (which means
‘Good evening!,’ he said, smiling disarmingly. ‘Do you think that the piano’s out of tune?’ ‘Ah, well,’ I said, as I often do when stumped, and coughed wetly.
cricket in Portuguese), all of whom hail from Brazil and live in Suffolk Park. They have created two products additional to the ‘neat’ cricket powder – Go Greensect (crickets plus spirulina, chlorella, turmeric and other) and Cacao Hopper (crickets plus cacao – ideal for bliss-balls, according to Pedro). They also make energy bars and have a growing number of cricket-based recipes on their website for you to try at home. I have now eaten crickets. Would you? [* More than 900 species, I later learn. The one I have just eaten is Gyllodes sigilatus.] Grilo is at www.griloprotein.com.au and local stockists include Baz & Shaz, Fundies, Herb Wisdom, Bangalow Gym and Cross Fit Byron Bay.
Pizza Relief
By Robert Dessaix
Just as I was finishing my mulligatawny soup in the hotel dining room, the small, crumpled pianist who’d been thumping out Cole Porter on the upright in the corner – or was it America from West Side Story? Rachmaninoff? Impossible to tell. Suddenly he appeared by my side.
Three-quarters of the Grilo team: Camila Meyer, Pedro Silva and Martina Meyer
Last Tuesday, 11 April, hundreds of Mullumbimby locals flocked to a ‘pizza night’ fundraising event in support of Lismore flood relief.
‘A chhota peg of sinful delight…’ his book The Himalaya Club and Other Entertainments from the Raj has been called. It’s a rollicking good read, still in print, that I can’t recommend too highly.
India. Snooker was invented in Ooty by bored British army officers. Nowadays the clientele at the Taj Savoy, where I put up, is hardly top-notch – riotous English tour groups from places such as Stoke-on-Trent, the odd New Zealander, and a few Indian families all chatting loudly in English – but very friendly.
You go to a hill station because it is not something rather than for something, as ‘The problem is, you see,’ he went on, you might in the case of Paris. It’s not hot, moving in closer and lowering his voice not flat, not squalid and not Calcutta, let confidentially, ‘you can’t get a piano-tuner alone (God forbid) Meerut. There’s nothing You can get all that in Katoomba, though, you might object – trees, cool air, chocoup here in Ooty.’ much there as a rule, just the odd vista late and really nothing to do. But Ooty is ‘None about?’ when the mist rises (if indeed it does), but Indian – that’s the point. Nowhere else at least it’s not wherever it is you usually ‘No-one you’d trust. The nearest one’s makes me feel so alive. Other places are live. In Ooty, apart from the roses in the in Chennai.’ He ran his fingers through as beautiful, as historically fascinating, but Botanical Gardens, there’s nothing much his oddly orange hair. ‘And then there’s nowhere else makes me feel so hungry to to see, which is precisely what you want the climate to consider. Up here in Ooty, live. Nowhere else – yet – has my heart. in a hill station. ‘It resembles Switzerland, ’ you see, we’re liable to extremes. It plays the Collector of Coimbatore wrote in 1819, havoc with the strings.’ Robert Dessaix is the past presenter of ‘with the hills beautifully wooded and ‘Ah,’ I said. the ABC program Books and Writing. He is a fine strong spring… in every valley.’ It ‘I would love to discuss my repertoire with doesn’t in the least resemble Switzerland, the author of several memoirs, essay colyou later, by the way,’ he said, heading lections and novels, including Night Letactually, it resembles a hill station in the off for a cup of tea to refresh himself for a Western ghats, but it’s picturesque and ters, A Mother’s Disgrace, and What Days new attack on the Broadwood, ‘if you have the air is blue in a certain light. In Ooty, as Are For. He lives in Hobart. His next book the time.’ It’s for moments like these that I in any hill station of quality, you want to The Pleasures of Leisure is due out in May. come to India. loll about somey Chai where dripping Udhagamandalam, or Ooty as it’s more with faded charm, affectionately known, is one of those hill y Coffee somewhere well stations perched up high in the Nilgiri above the rather Hills that the British and well-to-do Indiy Hot Chocolate ramshackle town ans have been flocking to for relief from y Milkshakes the heat for a couple of hundred years. It’s down round the market, to enjoy the at about the same elevation as the top of y Chocolates Mt Kosciuszko. I love hill stations – Shimla, cool, eucalyptusy Fudge scented air (it never Darjeeling, Manali and others. The first gets above the low Australian-born writer, John Lang, died in y Light meals a hill station. Indeed, his grave can still be 20s), and eat the local chocolate, visited in the Camel’s Back Cemetery in 1/53 Stuart Street, Mullumbimby which in Ooty’s case Mussoorie, which offers the living exten0406 422 465 y www.puremeltchocolate.com sive views of the Lower Western Himalaya. is famous all over
Chocolate Lounge
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The event was initiated by Jose Raez of Almond Road Bakery, with produce, desserts and services donated by numerous local businesses. The Byron Food Hub carpark became a makeshift pallet dining room where people gathered under a full moon,
enjoying tasty pizza and the music of talented local musicians, among them Stu and Amber of Mullum Uke. The team turned out 300 pizzas over three hours, impressively raising more than $4,500, which will be donated to the Lismore Gofundme campaign set up by Lismore Council. ‘I was grateful for the support of the community, and the enormous number of people who turned up on the night’, said Jose.
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The Byron Shire Echo April 19, 2017 29