Science, history, and gastronomy are on the menu this week! Building on our cicada episode with the buzz-worthy Dr. Gene Kritsky, co-hosts Dr. Diane and Lynn Wareh Coles unlock the secrets of the cicada convergence with a swarm of guests.
First up, Sue Fliess, author of the beautiful picture book Cicada Symphony. Sue's passion for cicadas, ignited during quiet pandemic strolls, led to a treasure trove of surprising facts. Discover how these insects protect their hearing while creating their trademark music and how you can engage with these fascinating creatures. We'll guide you through Sue's research journey, enriched by insights from the esteemed entomologist Professor Michael Raup, and offer up a family-friendly guide to turning your backyard into a wonderland of cicada discovery.
Check out these links for more cicada-themed learning:
Next up, step into the time machine with us as we trace the historical footprints of cicadas across centuries, from the Lewis and Clark expedition to Benjamin Banneker's pioneering work in entomology. History buff Jennifer Coleman provides insights into the world during the last major cicada convergence in 1803 and helps us connect the dots between their periodic emergence and pivotal moments in history.
Our conversation takes an unexpected turn to the kitchen, where cicadas transform from backyard curiosities to culinary delicacies. Have you ever considered the taste of cicadas or the crunch of grasshoppers in a salad? Christy Mihaly, co-author of Diet for a Changing Climate: Food for Thought, sheds light on entomophagy's role in nurturing our planet's health. "Chef" Barry Schnoor then joins us to offer practical cooking tips for the daring home chef. Beyond the potential environmental boons, we examine practical considerations, like allergies, and offer cooking tips for the insect-inclined. So whether you're a foodie seeking the next big thing or just curious about sustainable eating, this episode promises to satisfy your appetite for knowledge—and perhaps inspire your next adventurous meal.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
Science, history, and gastronomy are on the menu this week! Building on our cicada episode with the buzz-worthy Dr. Gene Kritsky, co-hosts Dr. Diane and Lynn Wareh Coles unlock the secrets of the cicada convergence with a swarm of guests.
First up, Sue Fliess, author of the beautiful picture book Cicada Symphony. Sue's passion for cicadas, ignited during quiet pandemic strolls, led to a treasure trove of surprising facts. Discover how these insects protect their hearing while creating their trademark music and how you can engage with these fascinating creatures. We'll guide you through Sue's research journey, enriched by insights from the esteemed entomologist Professor Michael Raup, and offer up a family-friendly guide to turning your backyard into a wonderland of cicada discovery.
Check out these links for more cicada-themed learning:
Next up, step into the time machine with us as we trace the historical footprints of cicadas across centuries, from the Lewis and Clark expedition to Benjamin Banneker's pioneering work in entomology. History buff Jennifer Coleman provides insights into the world during the last major cicada convergence in 1803 and helps us connect the dots between their periodic emergence and pivotal moments in history.
Our conversation takes an unexpected turn to the kitchen, where cicadas transform from backyard curiosities to culinary delicacies. Have you ever considered the taste of cicadas or the crunch of grasshoppers in a salad? Christy Mihaly, co-author of Diet for a Changing Climate: Food for Thought, sheds light on entomophagy's role in nurturing our planet's health. "Chef" Barry Schnoor then joins us to offer practical cooking tips for the daring home chef. Beyond the potential environmental boons, we examine practical considerations, like allergies, and offer cooking tips for the insect-inclined. So whether you're a foodie seeking the next big thing or just curious about sustainable eating, this episode promises to satisfy your appetite for knowledge—and perhaps inspire your next adventurous meal.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
The cicadas are coming and today on the Adventures in Learning podcast, we have an all-star lineup to help you get ready for the cicada convergence Wonder curiosity connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. So, oh, my goodness, I am so excited to welcome Sue back to the podcast. If you all don't know, she is the queen of cicadas. Her book is truly the Bible you want to use during cicada season. Cicada Symphony is one of my all-time favorite books and Lynn is now a total convert to this book. Sue Fleece, welcome back to the show. We're so happy you were willing to drop in for our cicada episode.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me back. Anytime I have a chance to talk about the cicadas is a great one, so thank you for having me. So I gotta ask the cicadas is?
Speaker 1:a great one, so thank you for having me. So I got to ask why cicadas? This is one of the few books out there that's about cicadas. Tell us why.
Speaker 2:You know, at first, I admit it started out a little selfishly when, during the pandemic, my husband and I were walking our dogs every day, several times a day, because there was nothing to do. And as the cicadas started to emerge, I really just wanted to learn more about them, because I'm an inquisitive person and I try to remember to continue to inquire about the world. And I started to really get fascinated by them. And at one point my husband, on one of our walks, said I think you're going to write a book about them, aren't you? And I said, no, no, I'm just doing a little research.
Speaker 2:And before I knew it, I had that opening line come to me, which was when we were walking. I thought, wow, isn't it crazy how, just a few weeks ago, we were walking here and they were all under the earth and we just didn't know exactly where. And now here they are. And yeah, the first line is there's a secret you should know bugs are lurking down below. And it kind of gave me this creepy vibe and I thought, okay, well, I've got to follow this. So then I just started writing and I wasn't sure anyone would even want to buy the book. So I was so excited when I found a home for it.
Speaker 1:It's such a great book and you had found some really cool facts you wanted to ask about.
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't know. So I'm an amateur naturalist and I grew up in Florida and I mean I've been catching cicadas since I was three. My parents delight, I'm sure, but I didn't know. I know it's the males that sing and they're so incredibly loud. I spent many hours up in the maple tree catching them and listening to them, but I didn't realize that they had that protection, that they could shut their ears, but I didn't realize that they had that protection, that they could shut their ears.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, I learned that during my research too. Apparently they could, otherwise they would deafen themselves with their own noise, which is crazy. But I guess you know, all animals have these protective things even humans, you know built in. So I didn't know that either. And I don't claim to be an expert on cicadas, I think I'm just an enthusiast. So anything I mean, even when I research anything, I'm obviously hoping to learn as much as I possibly can. So yeah, I thought that was pretty fascinating too.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you clearly did a lot of research to be able to create cicada symphony. Tell us a little bit about the process. How do you learn about cicadas?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so after my initial fascination by just looking at them live and also not alive on the ground and the exoskeletons and things like that, when I started to really dig in and go to the library and go online, I figured out or I found out there's this professor at the University of Maryland who is an entomology professor named Michael Raup, and I ended up watching a lot of videos that he has done. He's been interviewed by CBS and other media outlets and the way he spoke about the cicadas was almost poetic and I think that sort of inspired the vibe of the book as well. So shout out to Professor Raup, of course, holding them, touching them, looking at them and listening to them.
Speaker 1:So well, and that sounds like, as we've got this convergence of cicadas this year. Those are things that kids can do at home with their adults. They can do exactly what you're saying to be observers, to look, to hear. We even have a segment about tasting them.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, I show a little video clip. In my school visits to the kids, my husband, who is not squeamish at all, put one in his mouth and then opened his mouth and it flew out, but basically to prove to the kids that they're harmless. So, even though they have these very tacky feet I should say grippy feet to hang on to the trees. That's what kind of people get a little bit freaked out, because if they land on you they don't just brush off like a fly, would. They might be a little bit, seem to be holding on, but they're harmless and if they fly into you it's just because you got in the way of them. Going to the tree is what I tell them.
Speaker 3:They're so clumsy, I mean, they run into trees, they run into everything. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:But, yes.
Speaker 1:Filaments are so cool, the things that help them to grab on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I mean they. You know they have to have that because they have to stay there for a while. But yeah, when you mentioned taste, and I meant to comment on that apparently, when they're very whitish is when they taste like shrimp. Yep, my one dog, truman, used to love eating them, and I don't know when exactly he would eat them, what stage they were in. But you know, their whole defense mechanism for survival is to just produce so many cicadas that they can't all be eaten, which is rather interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what is the coolest, weirdest fact you learned about cicadas?
Speaker 2:Okay, that's hard to choose just one, but one of my favorite facts is that the female can lay up to 600 eggs at a time, so that is obviously how they keep producing so many cicadas every time they emerge producing so many cicadas every time they emerge?
Speaker 1:Wow, that's incredible. And what would you tell somebody who has never experienced a cicada convergence? How would you get them ready?
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, first I would just say don't be alarmed and don't be afraid and be ready for the noise, but just to be in awe that you're witnessing such an amazing natural occurrence, although I will say that this convergence hasn't happened since 1803. So you know, that's amazing in and of itself, it's a once in a lifetime occurrence, but, yeah, just to embrace it and that it won't last. So don't worry about you know being, you know going outside and just observe and and enjoy it if you can.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Sue. And for those of you who haven't seen it, you have to go get cicada symphony.
Speaker 2:It will take you through the cicada convergence yay, thank you so much for having me today.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate it and we're back with more cicada mania. We're thinking about the convergence of cicadas that's going to be happening in 2024 and how long it's been since that happened before. What was happening during that time?
Speaker 1:We have the perfect person right. Welcome back to the show Jen Coleman. She is a teacher and passionate lover of history, and if anybody can tell us what was going on the last time these two cicada broods got together, it's Jen hey.
Speaker 4:Jen. Hi. Well, thanks for having me back. I'm really excited to be here and, you're right, I absolutely love dropping some history knowledge, so I'm pretty certain that you'll probably know as soon as I get started. You'll probably know what was going on in the last time it happened. So the last time that these two broods occurred in the same instance was 1803. So yeah, 221 years ago, so 1803, it was a long time ago. So let me refresh your history. Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States. Aaron Burr was his vice president.
Speaker 1:Wait, so does that mean, Hamilton was still alive?
Speaker 4:Alexander Hamilton still alive out, like xander warbleton, I, I believe. So I don't imagine they would have allowed the vice president to be, uh, the person who uh took care of hamilton's. So I, I imagine, yeah, probably, um, so, so, yeah, so 1803 there's a lot of other stuff going on, great stuff, um, so the, um, so the. You may be familiar with the Louisiana Purchase occurring.
Speaker 4:So 1803, so we basically get you know, jefferson makes the official purchase in the spring, right around the time when the cicadas would have, you know, started popping up. And then the next year, so 1804, the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition Lewis and Clark expedition started in and around St Louis, which is where a lot of the convergence is actually going to be occurring. So thankfully they missed the 1803 double whammy there. But so, so, yeah, jefferson's president, they're making a big purchase which is going to cover a lot of land that that was not European settled at that point, so there were plenty of Native Americans living there. But this will be the first time that some of the white European settlers experienced this out out in the Midwest, that some of the white European settlers experienced this out in the Midwest.
Speaker 3:One thing I was thinking about when you were talking is you mentioned Lewis and Meriwether and how that was after the convergence, but that when they walked across, wherever they walked across, there were larval cicadas in the ground underneath their feet, ready to come out in another 16 years or 12 years. So something to think about. They're under our feet all the time. Yes, I like that.
Speaker 4:Yes, and so a couple other things going on in around 1803 that I want to mention before I go back to that, because I think that that is such a cool concept and a piece that I want to attach to other things, so I will go back there. But so a few other things that are happening, so like just to get in the mindset of how long ago this was, but who else was around at the time? So you get Thomas Jefferson, you get Alexander Hamilton, you get Aaron Burr, but you also have, like, other signers of the declaration. There were actually several signers of the declaration who had died in the year 1803, including the infamous Samuel Adams. Well, he didn't sign the declaration, but he was definitely involved in the revolutionary makings going on. So, like these are people we've read about in our history books, but they were alive the last time this happened. So like, how wild is this that these two things happened the same time, that these other people were alive, and such an amazing opportunity for us to experience the same thing. They did A lot of cicadas.
Speaker 4:So, to tie on to what you had mentioned, lynn, there are a couple of like sort of historical pieces that I want to mention. So, like, one of the first mentions of cicadas in America was actually by the pilgrims in Plymouth Colony in the 1600s. So obviously cicadas have been around for a while. But, like, if you think about it like we're, we're experiencing the, you know the grand, great great grandchildren of the cicadas that the pilgrims got to experience and then you know all of the Native American tribes that have experienced it as well. So those, those similar experiences of my favorite kind of tidbits about the um scientists and history tying together is um benjamin banneker was one of the first people to um sort of write more extensively about them. He was born, uh, the year of the 17, like he was born the. I forget which year he was born in, but he was born in the year of the 17.
Speaker 1:Oh, like year 17.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so he. So he was 17 the first time he actually experienced it, and then he was 34 and then he was in it. So he got to experience that 17 year brood multiple times, and each time he developed more and more knowledge. Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught scientist, astronomer and stuff like that. So he was. He was a mathematician, he was calculating all of that stuff to figure out when the next brood was going to happen, and he was able to mathematically map that out, which is a pretty cool thing too. So he was alive during this confluence of different broods as well. So I thought that was cool. So he's the first one to write about it and I think that that's. That's a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 3:So one of the things we hope to do is get more citizen scientists involved with cicadas. So that's a great example in the steps of Benjamin.
Speaker 4:Banneker yeah, absolutely, and I mean so. There are journal articles where he wrote about his experiences and as a 17-year-old he was afraid that they were going to take over the family's crops. So he just tried to kill as many as he possibly could, and when he realized that that wasn't a problem when he had turned 34, he was like, oh, this is so cool.
Speaker 1:Let me like observe these guys, it's amazing what a little bit of age will do too, and you know a little bit of experience and learning.
Speaker 4:So, absolutely so, yeah, I think that tying history in with this is pretty cool. So in 1803, there were 17 states, Ohio became the 17th state. So also imagine that again, that Louisiana Purchase, all those other states just didn't even exist on a map in our brains like the way we think about it. So unfortunately there weren't as many people to experience the the devil's cicadas.
Speaker 1:But hopefully people will go out and actually enjoy them in all that deafening glory this time around.
Speaker 4:Have a little more, have a little more appreciation, like pick them up. This could be the one that Benjamin Banneker like saved while he was doing experiments on it. I could. It could be his great, grand, grand cicada I like that.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, jen. Any other history for us, or is that get us wrapped up?
Speaker 4:I think that probably covers the major points. Obviously there are, you know, a couple more people in history that were born that year and maybe died that year. But I'll leave you with those tidbits, because those feel like the most important sort of most special ones.
Speaker 1:And if you guys find other things that were going on in history in 1803, we would love it if you would drop it in the comments, because we're always eager to learn more about cicadas and what was going on.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. So I found some resources that I figured I'd share. So the Smithsonian, the Natural History Museum for Smithsonian, has come up with some really cool resources, so I've got that link I'll share with you, diane. And then you know, I also found a thing about other singing animals, so things like dolphins, bats, that kind of stuff. So they're not uncommon, but that you know, cicadas are slightly different than bats, or much louder cicadas.
Speaker 4:Right, right, but like the cicadas we're talking about only come about every once in a while. You know there are Lynn mentioned. There are other cicadas all over the place that come up all the time, right, every year.
Speaker 3:So there's the two kinds of cicadas. There's the annual cicadas, which means they just come out every year, and the periodical ones that all come out at different timeframes. Like this convergence is a 17-year cicada they come out every 17 years and a 13-year, and so it's coinciding, it's the same year. But the periodical ones, the ones that come out at a time that only they know, apparently, are only found in North America. So the earliest known writing about cicadas comes from early Chinese folklore, but those are ones that just came out every year. So it's those of us in the United States and Mexico and Canada that experienced this convergence, or the broods that come out every year. It makes me think about what we were talking about earlier with Lewis and Clark and the Native Americans, and something that they experienced for years, with being able to explain it in different ways. So it's kind of cool to think about.
Speaker 1:I am so excited to welcome Christy Mahaly back to the show. If you don't remember her, I'm dropping the link to our wonderful conversation last year. She's an incredible nonfiction author. You have to check out her books. But tonight we have her here because we're going to talk about her book Diet for a Changing Planet, that she wrote with Sue Heavenridge. So, christy, can you tell us a little bit about Diet for a Changing Planet? Christy McGrath-Hillman.
Speaker 5:Well, I'd be happy to tell you about Diet for a Changing Planet.
Speaker 5:Sue and I wrote this book because we wanted to give kids. It's written for the high school age bracket and we wanted to give kids a practical, concrete step that they could take to address, to just do something to help the world and the environmental crises that teenagers really feel strongly about, strongly about. And we started talking about, we started wanting to spread the word of how eating insects is really good for the planet. The book grew from there because when we found an editor that was interested in publishing it, the publisher asked us to expand it beyond insects and talk about other food sources that were also sort of environmentally good, like eating weeds and eating invasive species. But for Sue and me, the insect eating was always the heart of this book, and so we came up with all kinds of recipes and a lot of science and information about why our food systems have adverse environmental impacts and how eating these other sources of food can reduce those adverse environmental impacts, and we really had a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1:So how can eating insects help the planet?
Speaker 5:Well, the deal is that insects are high protein food sources and they take they require much fewer resources to raise. If you're going to farm insects or to harvest them wild, then it takes to raise domestic meat animals like pigs and cows and sheep and the rest, and also those animals cattle in particular have high methane emissions and there's in the whole agricultural food system a lot of other greenhouse gas emissions. But to look at the resources, like water, the amount of water that it takes to feed a cow means that when you eat a hamburger, you're eating something that took gallons and gallons of water to produce, whereas the same level of protein from crickets, for example, takes much less water to produce, as one of the examples of the resources. So obviously crickets are smaller, so they don't take up as much land and there are many cricket farms that produce crickets for food and you don't have to eat a whole cricket.
Speaker 5:Cricket flour is or cricket powder. It's basically cricket powder. It's ground up crickets that has a lot of good protein in it and it can be used to add protein to things like smoothies. It can also be used for baking because it can be used as a kind of flour substitute, and we called cricket the gateway bug, because Maybe the spring cicadas might be the gateway bug for folks, as we've got emergence.
Speaker 5:As we've got emergence. It is so interesting that the 13 and the 17 year cicadas are showing up at the same time and one of the stories we tell in our book is about the one of the locust plagues, because in the in the Midwest, in the, it was in 18-somethings, 1875. The state entomologist of Missouri decided that he would issue an invitation to a dinner and all these people were so excited because it was going to be local food and everyone was really hungry because locusts had descended on the Midwest and had eaten a lot of the crops. Well, he was going to serve people and he did locust soup, locusts baked locusts, locust cakes and locusts with honey. He had learned from the Native Americans that they often made food out of locusts and he was like we need food, let's make some locust dishes. And so you know it was.
Speaker 5:You know people have to get over a lot of what we call the ick factor when they think about eating insects. But it's really nutritious and my understanding is I have not eaten cicadas, but my understanding is people say they're delicious. So like what's what's not to like?
Speaker 1:right? Well, we're going to have somebody on in a little bit my husband, koff Koff, who made cicada paella, and so he's going to share his paella recipe with folks. Wow, wow.
Speaker 5:Well, let me give you one warning note here, because paella makes me think shellfish For people who have a shellfish allergy. Don't eat insects and so the proteins in the shells it's the same allergen. So shellfish allergy, don't try the cicada paella. But otherwise cicada paella sounds very appetizing.
Speaker 1:So have you ever eaten insects?
Speaker 5:I couldn't write the book and not try them, right. So I have eaten packaged flavored crickets. So they, you know, they package them and they sell them with all kinds of flavorings, hot and spicy. And in addition, sue Heavenrich, my writing partner, is a gardener, and so she actually came to entomophagy from the perspective of these are pests in my garden. I wonder if I can eat them, and so she started thinking of ways to eat, like tomato worms and Japanese beetles. So, japanese beetles, she roasted them and spiced them up, and I ate some of Sue's Japanese beetles. So those are the insects that I've eaten. And you know it's it's weird to talk about, but in fact they're just crunchy little tidbits and it depends on how you season them, and some of them can be quite tasty depending on how you season them. They don't have a whole real big strong taste on their own, which is why, right, we eat chocolate-covered ants and things like that. Right, just go for the chocolate and it doesn't really matter what's inside.
Speaker 1:Everything's better with chocolate.
Speaker 5:There you go, there you go.
Speaker 5:So you used a vocabulary word entomophagy entomophagy entomophagy entomophagy is the practice of eating insects, and human beings have eaten insects for thousands of years. One of the things I learned in my research was that, you know, in many parts of the world they're just a normal part of the diet because they're a local source of protein, and people thousands of years ago learned that there were great ways to prepare them for food. So entomophagy is a human practice and there are, you know, in this country, movements, groups really proselytizing to get more people to adopt entomophagy, because primarily of its environmental benefits. And also, why did people for thousands of years eat them? Because they actually taste good. People came up with all kinds of ways to prepare insects that they found really appetizing. So, yeah, interesting, I teach high school.
Speaker 3:If you were going to give one piece of advice to the high school senior who was weirded out or had the ick factor, what would you say to convince them to try an insect?
Speaker 5:Ooh, one thing to tell a high schooler.
Speaker 3:Or two things.
Speaker 1:It's hard to tell.
Speaker 5:It's hard to give a high schooler advice, but I would say what's the harm, right? I mean, why not try it and think of? You know to impress people about how you ate a bug, and of course there are, you know the good reasons to do it. That it's, you know it's a way that, if enough people do it, we can actually make a difference in in terms of being being kind to the planet.
Speaker 1:So Well, so we've been teasing you all about the person who eats cicadas and we're glad to let you know that we were able to convince the one, the only, barry Schnoor, to join us on the podcast tonight. And I'm still playing the vegetarian card, barry welcome, thank you. Happy to be here, barry welcome.
Speaker 6:Thank you, happy to be here, and you say that I'm the person that eats cicadas, as if I'm the one person in the whole, being the whole world, that eats cicadas.
Speaker 1:Do you know somebody else?
Speaker 6:I know a few other Elses, yes, but I think in some cultures it's very normal. I was recently in Mexico Oaxaca, mexico and we had a meal. We had a morsel. We had something to eat called chapulines, and here in North America we would call them grasshoppers, but they were ground up rice-sized and served with maybe what tasted like Worcestershire or soy sauce. They were very savory and quite delicious, on a tortilla with some guacamole. It's not a cicada, but it's an indication that insect eating is normal in some places where they don't have it Entomorphology.
Speaker 3:We learned the word for it recently.
Speaker 6:What's the word?
Speaker 5:Diane.
Speaker 1:Entomorphology Entomorphology, yeahiane entomorphology. Yeah, I like it, I like it, so I gotta ask you the million dollar question. Sure, what got you thinking about eating bugs?
Speaker 6:a few years ago. Uh, we had a, not a locust, we had a, we had a cicada. Uh, birth, what's it called, lynn, what's it? What's the emergence? We had a cicada emergence, um, uh, and they were everywhere. So I thought, well, here's my chance to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. And uh, the first cicada I ate was straight off the tree. It was right on the tree and I grabbed it and popped it in my mouth, wings still flapping, and uh, I, I won't recommend that. It wasn't bad, it was earthy, it was fine. Uh, it's probably not for everyone. So what recipe?
Speaker 1:was for everyone. Well, maybe not for everyone, but but um, I know you did some trial and error and um, what did you finally settle on?
Speaker 6:well, so I I, the first one, um was sauteed cicadas with onions and garlic on uh on a bed of um pumpkin ravioli with a marinara sauce, and it was fine. I learned that you should take wings off cicadas before you eat them. And if you think about so, some people eat shrimp with shells still on them. I can do that, I don't mind doing that. I usually don't eat the tails unless they're deep fried and then they're crunchy and everything is good if it's deep fried, right. So I learned that I preferred cicadas without the wings. It's a texture thing for me, not really a flavor thing. My second meal, I don't know, we made a bunch. Well, I made a bunch.
Speaker 1:I would say there was no we involved.
Speaker 6:There was nobody else in the house that was eating them. Um, I made a. Uh, I made a Thai stir fry, which was really pretty good. Um, my favorite one. However, um was the last one that I prepared. Uh, and I had a friend over for dinner who had not had cicadas but was interested in trying them. So he came over and he brought some cicadas from his garden and he brought a couple of adult beverages and we made cicada jalapeño, a Spanish yellow rice dish with fresh vegetables, steamed vegetables, and the cicada was prepared by egg dipping and batter frying and they were juicy and delicious and washed down really well with the adult beverages.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good to know. So do you have any fun facts? We'd like to ask everybody who's on. Do you have any fun facts you want to share with us about cicadas, things that you've learned that you think are cool?
Speaker 6:Well, I mean no, I mean yes, the guidance that you'll want to take the wings off before you eat them. Think of cicadas as chicken, sky chicken. I've heard it described as sky prawns right, In fact, prawns. I've understood that people who have shellfish allergies should also not eat cicadas, because they.
Speaker 3:That's important for us to note. Yeah, they're both crustaceans, that's a definite.
Speaker 1:Definite no-no yeah.
Speaker 6:So if you think about shrimp or chicken or tofu for those of you who don't eat meat, it can go in so many different things, right? So you can have chicken with an Italian flair, you can have chicken with a Spanish flair, you can have chicken in paella. Usually, paella is a seafood dish, but if you can't eat seafood, you can certainly put chicken in it. I've prepared that in our house in the past. That didn't seem to be problematic, dr Diane.
Speaker 1:I wasn't a vegetarian then.
Speaker 6:So, I think, be creative. What are your flavors, what are the things you love to eat? I have not done this yet, but I will next time around. Cicada, tikka masala, a nice curry, because those are flavors that I love to eat. And so the, the Thai stir fry that I did because I love those flavors, the coconut and the fish sauce and the uh, the palm sugars. Um, all of those things, together with with cicadas, was just wonderful on a bed of rice or rice noodles, uh, some fresh steamed vegetables, if you like. I, I I mentioned, you know, italian chicken. You could do Italian cicadas. Take the wings off, you don't have to, but I think it's better. That's my, that's my recommendation.
Speaker 3:What would you tell the squeamish folks that say how would you complete that? It tastes like? What would you tell the squeamish folks that say, how would you?
Speaker 6:complete that it tastes like. It tastes so a little bit nutty. I won't say it tastes like shrimp, because I didn't experience that, but you know, when you stir fry something, when you batter fry something, it tastes like what you serve it with Right, or the sauce. When you batter fry something, it tastes like what you serve it with Right, or the sauce, or the sauce, which is one of the things that makes tofu so versatile and chicken and shrimp so versatile is you can use it in so many different things. So if you like Indian flavors, eastern flavors, southwestern flavors Ooh, southwestern.
Speaker 4:See eastern flavors um southwestern flavors.
Speaker 6:Ooh southwestern see that it's a cadence, with some black beans, some some uh salsa and sharp cheddar cheese on a tortilla.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be great, I would be all over that so do you have a book that you wanted to share a little bit with us?
Speaker 6:I do. I was just gifted this. I wonder who gave it to you A very dear friend. It's called it's well, you could read it. It's disgusting and we ate it. It's written by James Solheim, who I think I understand is from Omaha, Nebraska.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 6:Very near where I grew up and illustrated by Eric Brace. I don't know where Eric grew up, but I did look in this book. So this book does talk about all sorts of insects and other things that we have eaten throughout history, throughout human history. Have eaten throughout history, throughout human history, um, uh, worms and ants and crickets and grasshoppers, and things that we might think are disgusting only because we're socialized to think they're disgusting. Um, think about the first person who ate a shrimp. I mean, have you seen a live shrimp, a whole shrimp, not one that's that's sitting on the edge of a cocktail glass in cocktails, but a shrimp with these eyes sticking out and a hundred legs. I don't know how many legs, lynn.
Speaker 1:eight legs, six legs If you're listening to this and you're not watching.
Speaker 6:I just want you to know that he is sitting here with his fingers making antenna and shrimp crawly fingers sorry, yeah, for those of you, for those of you who are listening, and I was, I was uh, uh, I don't know what's, what's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was you were being a shrimp I was.
Speaker 6:I was, I was playing my inner shrimp, uh, but the first person who tried to eat one of those someone probably thought, man, you are crazy. Or I don't know if you like oysters. Who is the first person that tried that? I mean, I love oysters, but that's crazy. I mean, that's, those are like shell tonsils. I mean, why would you eat one of them? But, but, they're great, right, and people love them and we've become socialized. Escargot, of course, escargot is a great example of you. Put enough garlic and butter on anything, you can eat it and it's delicious, right. So, uh, it's, it's a delicacy in so many, uh, cultures. Um, I love it and so I you know. I think we just need to um, I don't know that you need to be brave, you just kind of need to let go of inhibitions.
Speaker 6:And so you know I'm going to try this and I think in 100 years my great, great, great grandkids aren't going to be able to walk down the street for a cheeseburger. I love cheeseburgers, I got to tell you. But you know I recognize that those have an enormous environmental impact. You know you can minimize that by local beef. If you're going to eat beef, by local beef, that's maybe grass-fed and has a much lower impact. But I think those things you know the way we eat now, with almost 8 billion people in the world my great, great great grandkids are going to be 20 billion people in the world we're not going to be able to sustain the way we're eating then. This book, by the way, does mention cicadas, among other things. This is where I learned that in Australia there's a sugar ant that stores so much sugar in its abdomen that people eat them and it tastes like honey. But apparently Aristotle says that here. I can read this to you, if I can find it again. Aristotle said that cicadas taste best with their eggs inside of them.
Speaker 1:Good to know. And how does what? Oh, I guess you have to wait before they lay then.
Speaker 3:Well, I did read and I'm curious if this you said you ate one off a tree the first time. Did it just emerge? Was it still white?
Speaker 6:I don't remember.
Speaker 3:So I read that the tastiest cicada I have not tried them, I haven't ever eaten one but is when they first come out. The adult is first emerging from the nymph. They're white before they circulate and before their wings spread out. And they're supposed to taste like asparagus at that time, so I don't know if that's what Aristotle meant or not.
Speaker 6:I don't know. I don't think this one was still white. I think it was attached to a tree trunk, maybe climbing the tree trunk. I grabbed it mid-climb. I disturbed it. It seemed to be unhappy. That didn't last long.
Speaker 1:We will send you out on a field trip during this convergence and if you find any new recipes you can share with us. Thanks for joining us today, barry. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Barry, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, lynn, it has been so much fun talking about cicadas with you for the last two weeks, and I hope that our listeners have enjoyed it as much as we have. I thought it'd be fun to sort of finish this up by talking about some of the things that you can take and do with cicadas, and so I thought I'd start by turning it over to you, because you happen to be wearing a very cool ring tonight and thought maybe we'd talk about that. I love my cicada ring.
Speaker 3:It came from an artist selling underneath a bridge in Brooklyn and quite some time ago, but there's all kinds of beautiful pieces out there that people are hand making. I think cicadas capture a piece of your imagination. We wouldn't have spent the last few weeks talking about it if they didn't capture a piece of imagination. If they didn't capture a piece of imagination, you can get our amazing Cicada Mania hats, of course, at Cicada Mania and be just like us. I have seen stained glass apparel. My daughter, who is an artist, has cut out a stamp which you can make a stamp from a potato. You can make a stamp from a carrot and cut it out, reverse cut, and so then when you ink it, you get.
Speaker 3:This is, of course, a nymph a cicada nymph and you can print it on fabric or any other kind of things. But Cicada Mania also has coloring pages and those other activities that we referenced earlier, and I guess we'd like to challenge you all, listeners. What can you make? What can you share with us? That's cicada focused.
Speaker 1:And you could build cicadas like. Oh actually, I'm going to show you guys a little something that I like to do. I always carry a bag of blocks with me when I'm off and teaching and one of the things that I would suggest. I love these blocks, you know, there's Kapla planks, there's Kiva planks, there's all kinds of off-brand ones as well. Have your kids build cicadas out of these planks. You know, can they get theanks, can they get the head, can they get the thorax, can they get the abdomen? I'll drop a picture in the story so you can see what I'm talking about. But it's so much fun when the kids build their bugs and they can show you that they understand the different parts. So that would be one challenge. Is Elena selling those beautiful prints that you were showing earlier? Lynn, she does.
Speaker 3:She does have a little shop. We can drop that in there.
Speaker 1:So if you want to get some of those cicada prints, I highly recommend them. They are gorgeous. We'll drop some links to other cicada stuff as well, but here's our challenge to you If you do something with cicada art or doing cicada making or something in the classroom, drop it in the comments, because we would love to see it. Tag us on social media. We are all about all the things cicada that you create and we're going to be offering a little something as well, aren't we?
Speaker 3:Yes, so we put together a cicada quiz of sorts, assortment of cicada facts that you can play with your students or your family with a Jenga style game, and so if you head on over to Teachers Pay Teachers and we'll put a link in there you can purchase that for a very small price and then learn a lot about cicadas, things that you never imagined.
Speaker 1:And thank you so much for joining us on this adventure. Now that Lynn and I have started co-hosting podcasts together, I'm going to try to talk her into coming back and joining me for a couple more science-based ones this year, because it has been so much fun getting to dive a little bit deeper. So put in some ideas for things you want to hear us talk about as well, because I'm always open to new ideas and new topics and new content. So we're happy to deliver. Thanks for joining us on the Adventures in Learning podcast. Thank you so much. You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, dr Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianeadventurescom. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.