Freeze them for easy cookin'

Monday
(photo is of Gerald and Lally Warren and Dineyo (sp?) who has found a home with them for now)

On Friday I made an excursion to Lobatse to visit Gerald and Lally Warren for an overnight trip to the countryside, to a slightly hilly town 10-minutes drive from the border with South Africa.

I’ll tell you more about Gerald and Lally in the next dispatch. But, keeping with the bugs theme, I can’t resist this tidbit, which is sure to please the three little boys who live in the Whittemore house in Florida and find all manner of wild critters fascinating. And if my memories from childhood still hold, the motto for little boys should be the ickier the better, the grosser the better. (Hey, come to think of it, that’s still the case for my supposedly grown-up boss, Holwerk.)

Everyone here is astonished by the amount of rain that is falling. Sechele says it is considered an auspicious sign before the new president, Ian Khama, takes over on April 1. Prosperity for the country and its people is at hand. He also said one might note that a lot of the rain has come since my arrival and that I could begin to be called Mma Pula, aka Ms. Rain. Which is a good thing in a semi-arid country. Really. (And another hint: I didn’t know how to pronounce Mma and Rra. It’s Ma and Ra, like Ma and Pa Kettle or “Rah, rah, sis, boom, bah.” If you can do it – and I can’t – roll the r. The words are the equivalent of Mrs. or Ms. and Mr. You should always say “Hello, Madame or Hello, Sir.” In Setswana, it’s “Dumela, Mma! Dumela, Rra.!)

But back to the bugs.

Gerald Warren in Lobatse brought up the fact that I had said I eat pretty much anything. If that was the case, he said, I’d be interested in knowing how all of this rain had stirred up the flying ants. I probably had noticed some of the wings on the bathroom and kitchen floors in the morning.
No, I’d missed them.
Well, he said, the flying ants are considered delicious. Snap off the head and the body that remains is a powerhouse of protein. Just fry them up and you’ll find that they have a distinctly nutty flavor.
Mmmm. I made a scrunched-up face. Seriously?
He was indeed. Some people bend over the ant hills and catch the ants as they fly out of the ground. And with a tip you wouldn’t find on the Food Network, he said the trick is to put them in the freezer first. That way the wings freeze and fall off, and it’s easier to prepare the ants.

Since I got that bit of news, I’ve bought a jar of Black Cat peanut butter as a treasured stash in my suitcase, just in case. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to my frying up ants for dinner. I’m not as brave as I thought, certainly not in the league with the Grand Gourmand of the Iron Gut, Carol Hanner in Colorado, who didn’t think twice before popping a lemon ant of the Amazon jungle into her mouth to try it, because the guide suggested we see for ourselves. And, yes, Carol said it tasted like lemon. I gagged and said, “No, thanks.”
My mind wanders back to the wine country, to that fig and proscuitto sandwich topped with Pt. Reyes blue cheese….