A Truly Paleo Recipe: Mealworm Meatballs

 (Look, I can do pretty blog graphics, too!)



My very first bug recipe! And it's neither cookies nor lollipops! It was pretty much trial and error, but it ended up delicious, and it let me stretch 1lb of ground beef into 3 meals instead of 2, which is the first $2 towards making those worms earn their keep :)

Ingredients

• 2oz of frozen mealworms (I eyeballed this; it was enough to fit in my cupped hand)
• 1lb ground beef
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1 can tomato paste
• Copious heaps of basil and oregano
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves garlic
• Whatever else you want in your meatballs

Directions

• Remove the mealworms from the freezer. Very quickly, while they're still frozen, chop them up into tiny pieces.
• With your hands, fold the mealworms into the ground beef. Add the basil and oregano + any other spices you want, and take out your aggression on it until everything is nicely mixed.
• Form the meat/worm/spice mixture into meatball-size balls.
• Melt the butter, throw in the garlic, and fry the onions until they're translucent. Add the meatballs, and cook on high until they're nicely browned on all sides. Throw in the diced tomatoes.
• While this is going on, mix the tomato paste with an equal amount of water. When the meatballs are all browned, pour this over top, turn the heat down to medium-low, cover the pan, and cook until all the meatballs are cooked through.

I could not taste the mealworms at all in this. No texture, no flavor, no nothing. I couldn't even see them through the tomato sauce. Next time I'll use 4 oz, and see if that disappears as easily as 2!

Look, see? Totally invisible worms.

I served it over baked yellow squash because I did not plan ahead and forgot that I had spaghetti squash in the fridge. Still tasty though!

I apologize if I have committed any sins against meatball wisdom here; I totally made this up as I went along. I think you're supposed to use some kind of binder, like an egg or something? Maybe it's just my crazy 0.0000000001% fat uber-grass-fed CSA beef, but I didn't need one.


My first summer reading assignment for the new semester is Dracula; I'm still in the middle of it, and I already have so many thoughts about the sex = food = blood thing. There is so much interesting stuff going on there with the legitimate and illegitimate appetites/consumption! And the fear/disgust aimed at people with "illegitimate" appetites - people who eat the wrong things, or want to eat too much. If I can ever get my brain wrapped around it, I'll probably end up writing a huge rambling post or three.

It's really ridiculous how I will be so totally depressed and frustrated, and all it takes is something intellectually interesting to pull me right out of it.