Special Quesadillas (written August 14)

After eight out of the ten students in our group had fallen asleep during our meeting earlier in the day with members of a local social action organization, we decided it was time to eat. As always I was totally up for the task of getting lost in the streets of a small, somewhat isolated Mexican pueblo in search of a suitable foodery. But Rob, also as always, had to add some dynamic of danger/mystery (which suitably, is Rob’s nickname) to our food hunt. Somewhat desperate to eat, I reluctantly put my empty stomach in Rob’s hands as we entered the local food market.

Ostensibly, the place appeared to be just like any other food market we had visited. I was relieved when Rob finally signaled to the group and I that he had found one quesadilla stand, amongst the maybe 15 others, that would do just fine. After I squeezed into a seat, my mind temporarily drifted from the unnerving task I had before me as I watched the healthily plump lady behind the counter roll, beat and flatten one tortilla after another. However, my mind quickly caught up with my stomach as, after cranking out a good stack of tortillas, she took each one and proceeded to over stuff it, and I mean seriously way over stuff it, with anywhere from 50 to75 crickets.

Obviously, with little ability to step down from a challenge placing my masculinity on the line, I had no choice but to raise my hand when Rob asked the group who’d be joining him in ordering the dish of the day. Agreeing that splitting a quesadilla wouldn’t constitute a failure to complete the challenge, Jared and I decided to just get one for the two of us. Unfortunately, we forgot to let the tortilla grilling lady in on our plans. Thus, each man was to eat his own cricket-packed quesadilla.

I avoided making a second, potentially graver mistake, when I realized, just as the lady was shooting my quesadilla the “you no longer belong on that grill” look, that there was no ‘cricket taste neutralizer’ (really any condiment at all) to accompany my quesadilla’s crickets. There was no time to think, only to act. So I lunged forward, smacking my quesadilla out of the lady’s hand, demanding that she add cheese. “Add cheese,” I said. My cat-like reflexes to hop over the counter and smack my treat out of the lady’s hand had subsequently attracted the attention of several patrons. I didn’t care, my quesadilla had been saved. Or so I thought. (The above account might be mildly exagerated)

To be honest, there is nothing short of a, scratch that, there is nothing that could have saved my sandwich. Thinking “well at least if I’m the first to take a bite I can include that fact when I tell this story later,” I took a disastrously ambitious bite, filling my mouth with salted cricket carcuses.

Besides that occasional cheeseless bite that left me shaking my head, glaring at the tortilla lady (I no doubt would have muttered something if my mouth hadn’t been full of dried cricket skeletons), and the dozens of cricket legs that were stuck in the back of my throat like popcorn kernels, the taste wasn’t really so bad. What did it taste like, you might ask? Not unlike hay that’s been sprinkled with salt and thrown on a grill: not awful, but not going to be making its way on my plate anytime soon. That’s not true. Never again will I eat crickets.

I am fully aware that, after having seen my fair share of generic ‘Exotic Foods in the Chinese Market’ Food Channel programs, there are far grosser things one can put into one’s body than crickets. However, when I made that very point to my dad over the phone, after he had suggested that he’d eat brain before eating crickets, he contested, “Yea, but at least with brain you’re eating meat. With crickets, you’re…why would anyone do that?”

Word.