Here's a summary of our Bug Banquet @ Green Man Festival experience, which was funded by the Kickstarter I mentioned in my last post, and turned out to be one of the most exciting science outreach events I've ever been lucky enough to be a part of.

So, thank you to everyone who was a part of this event :) I have never done an 'outreach' event that has reached so many people before - but l hope it is the first of many!


(And thank you also to the festival organisers - Green Man was a great place to be, and in between all of the insect-related excitement, there was an amazing range of live music to enjoy. Favourite performances would have to be Sun Ra Arkestra and the Deep Throat Choir. Food-wise, I discovered that the Cornwall-based Goan Seafood Company makes possibly the best curries in the entire world.)

NB: Finally, this is an important thing to mention, and became a part of several of our discussions.. Our main challenge in putting on this event was that of preservation. We spent four summer days camping at the festival, and we needed some way to ensure that our insects would not go off. We had no fridge, no smoker, no dryer… So Becky, our talented chef who is more than familiar with all of the restrictions of food health and safety laws, not to mention the logistical problems involved in transporting food over long distances, opted for sugar. She made a variety of sweet dishes - brownies, nougat, even a jelly - and although this meant that festival-goers could not experience insects in the way that they are traditionally eaten - usually fresh, and as part of a balanced, savoury meal - it did mean that we were able to give thousands of people their first taste of insects.

Good bye, England!

But before I say good bye, I'd like to share some happy surprises I've come across in the past few months..

Here is the first: People in England enjoy Japanese insects!

This is a photo of a participant at a workshop held near Oxford, looking very happy with her insect creation! It's a tortilla topped with roasted veg and Japanese grasshoppers...and she left the festival clutching a bottle of 35% hornet liquor, to be saved for her 18th birthday party, which is still at least a decade away...

So how did this happen?

When Becca and I visited Japan in May to give presentations on insects, nutrition and sustainability, were given a very generous 3kg of edible insects by Mr Tsukuhara. Becca had the great idea of using these to share information about insects as food at a local festival - Tandem festival. Becca is a political economist, and she also recruited Annie, a psychologist, so we were a three-person team. Here are their accounts of the event: Grub's Up (Annie) and Look Down (Becca)

The workshop sparked a lot of discussion...

...Not to mention a great deal of culinary creativity! (Yes, that's a wasp larvae and salsa 'pizza')

Next, we’ll be collaborating with other Oxford-based science communicators and chefs to take a similar workshop to Green Man Festival, at the end of August.

This time, though, we’re hoping to reach thousands of people! We have some core funding and we’ll be holding an insect picnic in Einstein’s Garden, under the grandiose banner of ‘Bug Banquet’ (I love this name, because it’s so true. In many places in the world, insects are festival foods, seasonal delicacies for special occasions.)

We have initial funding, but in order to really make an impact, we need a little more… so please do visit our kickstarter page if you’re feeling generous, and if this is something you’d like to support. We’re running this on a not-for-profit basis, and our aim is to get people discussing, thinking about and enjoying edible insects.

Anyway. On to my second topic for this post... Honeybees!

This photo was taken in a back garden in Oxford, at 7.30pm one evening, and as you can see, they’re pretty active. This is partly because it’s very warm in the UK at the moment, but also because this house, despite being very close to the city centre, is surrounded by a lot of ’wild’ land where these bees can forage for all sorts of nectar.

My biggest surprise, though, came from the style of hive:

It’s a Kenyan top bar, just like hives I’ve seen in Uganda and Zimbabwe! Apparently you can buy them here in the UK, made to order - and why not? These are great hives, and the bees here seem to like them too.

Which brings me to my third ‘meeting of worlds’.. Foraging.

This is meadowsweet, which at this time of year is scattered throughout the field I happily call my ‘back garden’ when at home in Oxford. I’ve known it as a flower for years - but I had no idea that it can also be used to make a sweet infusion, similar to elderflower, which would probably go very well in a summery gin-based cocktail..

And this is a crayfish trap! 

A simple union of plastic wire and a bicycle basket. Crayfish are also caught in Japan, where they are known as 'zari-gani', although I've never fished for them there - apparently there used to be lots in the irrigation channels bordering the rice paddies, but now there are very few due to runoff from agricultural chemicals.

Anyway, using this ingenious invention (it’s Shoji’s and I think he should patent it, it worked so well) and some fishguts, free of charge from Hayman’s fisheries in the Oxford covered market, Shoji and I caught 8 little crayfish in a single evening - all in a part of the river Isis that I've swum in and rowed on, countless times, without ever thinking about the animals beneath me! 

I’ve enjoyed finding out that familiar worlds can meet in unexpected ways on home turf, but I’m leaving now for a little while, and looking forward to learning new things in unknown places.

When I come back, though, I do hope that in my ‘back garden’, these very well-known berries will be ripe for the picking..

Our work on edible insects is starting to draw attention here in Oxford! To start things off, here is my supervisor Pete Scarborough talking about the mind-altering properties of hornet liquor, the ethics of vegetarianism and larvae consumption, and solving the major problems of population-wide disease and food insecurity in a world increasingly affected by climate change.

And next up, for any of you in the Oxford area keen to try edible insects for yourself (and perhaps even win a bottle of hornet liquor), here's an advert for a workshop that we (Annie, Becca and I) we are putting on next weekend, at Tandem festival:

Annie is a psychologist and Becca is a geographer. We're all interested in the interrelated issues of culture, health, environmental impact, psychology, consumer choice and sustainability, in relation to edible insects. Here's a brief description of what our workshop will involve:

       This 1.5hr workshop will explore the culture, the taboos and the deliciousness of traditional insect foods, concluding with some information about sustainability issues surrounding this unfamiliar food source.

       Sponsored by Tsukahara, a small Japanese family enterprise specializing in wild foods, we offer approximately 20 participants the opportunity to experiment with some hands on insect cuisine and the chance to win a unique insect product.

       But it’s not exclusive - everyone is welcome to show up and join the discussion and taste exploration.