Chocolate Toasted Ants, Worm Crisps, Weasel Coffee & Reindeer Pate

By Gendy Alimurung Mon., Dec. 1 2008 at 8:00 AM

Categories: Food

Welcome back from the weekend. Sick of turkey? Have some chocolate covered ants. The British company Edible makes unusual treats. BBQ worm crisps, chocolate covered giant ants, chocolate covered scorpions, toasted leafcutter ants (they taste like bacon), mopani worms. Even an oven-baked tarantula:

Black, hairy and originally eaten out of necessity during the Khmer Rouge period. Since then it has become a national delicacy. Our Tarantulas are collected from monitored sources to ensure their preservation.
Our Cambodian Oven- Baked Tarantulas come cooked and ready to eat or you can also warm them up in the oven! Full eating instructions come with the product.

Readers of Alexander McCall Smith's The No. One Ladies Detective Agency will recall that Mma Ramotswe is a connoisseur of mopani worms. Devotees of Bear Grylls' Man vs. Wild are un-shocked when Bear happily eats all manner of ants, grubs, crickets, and other insects a plenty. No beetle is safe from his stomach: if he can get his jaws around it, he'll eat it.

You can eat them too. Or drink them--how about some scorpion vodka? Or lick them--those scorpion lollipops look tasty. The Thai Curry Crickets (order hymenoptera, species Acheta domestica) are seasoned with green curry and "farm raised on a diet of fresh grains and cereals." They are "great with ice cold beer!"

Meat is also on the menu. Ostrich egg omelets. Reindeer pate ("an indulgent Christmas treat! Farm raised relative of Rudolph"). Crocodiles did not get a chance to eat Steve Irwin, but you can eat crocodiles. "Most of us are familiar with meats such as beef, chicken or pork," says Edible. "But to many people around the world, they do not even factor into their everyday diet." They have gathered some of the most "interesting" fish and meat products on the globe, "made to [their] exacting specification."

The "Civet Coffee" supposedly the "rarest coffee in existence," is made from the dung of the Common Palm Civet Cat (or Paradoxurus hermpahroditis). The cat prowls the Sumatran coffee plantations at night, eats the ripest cherries, and poops. Then natives collect the droppings. It's supposed to be very flavorful due to the fact that the beans are partially fermented by passing through the gut of the civet. Edible also offers tea picked by monkeys in China--proof positive that everybody, even non human primates, works in a communist state--and coffee regurgitated by weasels ("rich chocolatey flavor best served as an espresso with a dash of condensed milk").

Ironically, these foodstuffs are not cheap. It costs a starving indigenous person virtually nothing to eat a leafcutter ant, but for you in the United States, a pack of them will set you back $19.88. Shipping the ants here costs extra. Or you could sniff around your backyard and eat them for free.