Check out this description …
These large and powerful insects are as adept at swimming as they are at flying. These insects bear the nickname “toe-biters� and are capable of inflicting a painful stab with their sharpened front beak. These bugs feed on other aquatic insects, tadpoles and even small fish, injecting them with a powerful toxin and digestive juice that allows the bug to suck up the contents at will. They are also known for their snorkel-like breathing tubes at the end of their abdomen.
Ingredients: Giant waterbeetle 96%, Flavouring 4%, NET WT. 30g
Eating instructions; Remove exoskeleton and then eat everything except the head and legs, try dipping them in your favourite sauce and enjoy!
Oooh yummy! Maybe the next time someone asks you if you are up for some Thai food you should ask them to be more specific. At any rate, it sometimes pays to read the labels. That is, if you can read them.
Back in the day when I used to fancy myself as some sort of culinary Indiana Juliette, I thought it fun to walk into an ethnic market, choose a mystery item wrapped up in its indecipherable packaging and take it home to cook something up. That is, until an enterprising shop keeper asked me if I would like to take TWO cans of the swamp roaches in hot sauce for a price break. Well, that cured me. But obviously there are other people who would have jumped at the deal.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of
Thailand Unique -- the online shop that specializes in insects, arachnids, reptiles and other “food� products that have been raised on commercial farms in Thailand expressly for the dinner table. If you are Thai, Chinese, Malay, or maybe just a Westerner into bizarre eating fetishes, this site is for you.
Interesting though, that in a business selling ant egg larvae, curried grasshoppers, deep fried frogs, bamboo worm soup, and small lizards pickled in whiskey (among other items too icky to mention), the category classified as “Weird� includes: durian fruit paste, deep fried pork products and dyed chicken eggs. All going to prove that one man’s delicacy is just another man’s infestation problem.
If all this has you salivating, be assured that you can order your next can of creamed bug paste from Thailand Unique using credit cards or Pay Pal … but if the waiting time is too long, you could always save yourself the $3.95 and postage (plus a trip to the car wash) by running out to the garage and licking your car windshield clean. After all, who can get by these days without multi-tasking?
