"beetles" news and stories

Yesterday's New York Times featured a great account of eating a variety of insects in Thailand's Ubon province. Jennifer Gampell writes about tackling crunchy, salty fried scorpions (right), as well as grasshoppers and crickets. She passes on the large water beetles, but apparently takes a liking to a type of fly, fried with lemongrass and served in a spicy salad of chili and green papaya. Meals like this are abundant at roadside stalls in Ubon, Gampell says. The details of exactly what and where she ate are a little cloudy, however, since English names and locations seem, at times, hard to come by.