Plucking cicadas off tree branches was easier than I expected.
Chopping roasted cicadas was a piece of cake.
The hard part was hearing 150 cicadas rustling and thumping in the shuddering collection bucket. Occasionally, one croaked like a tiny, dying parrot.
All day, I was checking my hair for bugs.
For centuries, cicadas have been a staple and a delicacy in the diets of many cultures. Aboriginal Australians and Americans ate them, as did ancient Greeks and Romans.
Cicadas are vegetarians, so they are a wholesome protein source, according to "Cicadalicious: Cooking and Understanding Periodic Picadas," published by the University of Maryland. The guide and others contain hundreds of cicada recipes.
In order to use them for cooking, the cicadas were frozen, plucked of their wings and legs, and roasted. The males must then be separated from the females. Only female cicadas can be used for cooking; the males are hollow inside. After they are roasted, the cicadas must be chopped up.
Bill Olmsted/Gazette Staff
There are thousands of cicada species. One of them makes its appearance every 17 years to the south and west of Lake Michigan. When we found the bugs along the Rock River, The Janesville Gazette staff decided to see what the buzz was all about.
Photographer Bill Olmsted and I collected 17-year cicadas from Camp Indian Trails on the Rock River, and I mixed them into cookies and bread for the Gazette staff to try.
The process was a lot less disgusting than I anticipated. When they emerge again in 2024, the only thing I will do differently is collect more.
I geared up for the hunt with gardening gloves and salad tongs. I wanted a biohazard suit, but they don't sell those at Big Lots.
Bill and I went to Camp Indian Trails at 6 a.m. Thursday to look for newly emerged cicadas, called tenerals, which are the best for eating.
The ground was dotted with finger-sized holes where the tenerals had emerged, but they had already shed their skins and entered adulthood.
Next time, I'll try going earlier in the morning and earlier in the emergence season.
The next best cicadas for cooking are adult females, although they require more work. The males are no good because they're hollow inside.
Ladies, feel free to run with that joke all day.
Not being an entymologist, I couldn't tell the difference between males and females by looking at them, so I picked them all. They're easy to sort after cooking.
The cicadas were so thick-every bush, tree and Boy Scout archery target was covered-I could have gathered 1,000 without much effort. But I was pretty grossed out, so I quit after an hour.
I learned that if a cicada squawks when you pull it off its perch, put it back. Only the males make noise.
The females face their doom with silent resolve.
I was relieved to pop the cicadas-bucket and all-into the freezer, otherwise known as the Cicada Chamber of Doom.
Once they were dead, the rest was easy.
First, the wings and legs need to be plucked. I recommend wearing surgical gloves. I didn't, and my fingers still are stained black.
Then the wingless, legless cicadas went into boiling water, where they gave off a smell like simmering mud. From there, they went into the oven.
After a few minutes, it's easy to separate the men from the women. Roasted male cicadas resemble tiny, deflated inner tubes.
The males, about half of the harvest, went in the trash, and the females went on the cutting board.
After all that work, I ended up with a half cup of what looked like greasy, chopped walnuts.
We'll eat anything The Janesville Gazette staff sampled two dozen badly burned cicada granola cookies and two loaves of zucchini bread-one with cicadas and one without. Some people refused. But most reporters will eat anything that's free.
"I think the nuts make it interesting because you don't know what you're biting down on."-Online Manager Jonathan Lindquist
"I eat more bugs in the food I have at home."-Reporter Catherine W. Idzerda
"Are they going to be crunchy or gushy?"-Assistant Features Editor Ann Fiore
"I ate both the burned cookies and the bread. I found them both delightful and disturbing. Disturbing because of the weird dreams I had after eating a cookie-could they possibly be psychoactive? Delightful because of the revenge implicit in eating these infernal noise-makers."-Reporter Frank Schultz, who ate a cookie before reading the e-mail warning him they contained cicadas.
"What's at the trough today?" "Cicada bread." "Ugh. I think I'll just stay over here."-Assistant Features Editor Heather Lisser
"Is there anything over there without raisins? Because Kyle won't eat anything with raisins."-Reporter Stacy Vogel, who planned to give her husband a cookie without telling him it contained cicadas.
"So, I started off with a cicada cookie. An item with chunks and a tougher texture seemed more attractive than soft bread, where a potentially crunchy cicada might have an obvious presence. I didn't detect anything weird, though they had a subtly different flavor than anything I've ever had. But then I've never had granola in cookies.
"Later I tried the bread, one piece of each. I think sample A has the cicadas. I'm pretty sure I detected a sort of grainy, slightly crunchy ingredient in there. That or this is totally placebo effect and it's all in my head. But I swear there was something in there ..."-News intern Brian Reisinger, who was right. That was the loaf with the cicadas.
"At least it's not burned."-Features Editor Tracy Ndlovu, cautiously eyeing a slice of cicada zucchini bread.
"Everyone was grossed out when I brought my cookie back upstairs. We were dissecting the second half of it to find the cicadas, but each one we thought was a bug was really a raisin. I guess I have a raisin-aversion.
I was just happy that I didn't have cicada stuck in my teeth!-WCLO reporter Beth Wheelock
"Visually, it appears there's a toasted cicada in this one."-Local News Editor Sid Schwartz, pointing to the rear end of a cicada poking out of his slice of zucchini bread.
Cooking with cicadas The University of Maryland has posted many cicada recipes online. While a reporter will eat anything that's free, the university recommends the rest of the population check with their doctor before eating cicadas, especially people with shellfish, soy or nut allergies.
Cicada Granola Chews
by Carrie Brown
15 cicadas
1 C flour
1 C brown sugar
½ t cinnamon
½ C butter
1 egg
½ t vanilla
¼ t baking soda
½ t salt
3 to 4 C granola/raisin cereal
Freeze cicadas and break off legs and wings. Boil for 5 minutes. Bake at 550 degrees for 10 minutes. Take cicadas out and cut up very finely. Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large bowl stir together flour, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Stir in remaining ingredients except cereal until smooth. Stir in half of the cereal. Form dough into 1-inch balls and roll in remaining cereal. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes, or until golden brown.
Marge Ames' World Famous Zucchini Bread, with cicadas
(Makes two loaves)
4 eggs
1 ½ C oil
3 C sugar
3C grated zucchini, raw
3 t vanilla
1 ½ t salt
½ t baking soda
5 t cinnamon
1 ½ t baking powder
1 C chopped nuts, optional
½ C raisins
5 C flour
¼ C chopped, roasted cicadas
Mix all ingredients until well blended. Grease bread pans. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour. For dark bread, use brown sugar instead of white.
Sources: University of Cincinnati Clermont College Web site, Marge Ames
