"It is very simple to become a happy worm breeder"
Nadezhda Serkova"I have a visual aid for you... if they’re not dead yet." A short girl with long dreadlocks opens a plastic box - I recoil slightly.
Admittedly, this is only a small part of what lives in her bathroom. One day Nadezhda Serkova, a
"In general I don't really like insects; nevertheless, they moved in with me. After a while I got used to them, then I tried eating them and everything became normal even though for some time after I still couldn’t quite shake off my squeamishness," says Nadya [short for Nadezhda]. Now she believes that mealworms are no different from meat or fish. "Protein is protein."
Nadezhda Serkova
КАША studio"It all started with my boyfriend Serezha and friend Mitya. They usually come up with several brilliant ideas a day. One day they came to me and said: ‘Mealworms are the thing!’ They had read about them on the ‘How to survive on 100 rubles ($1.7’) public page [on the VKontakte social platform] where users usually post cheap recipes. It must have been a half-serious posting along the lines of: ‘Guys, you can also eat worms, and they are almost free.’ At the time I said that I could only offer them my moral support.
“But literally the following day we watched the documentary
Mealworm farm
Nadezhda Serkova"It is very simple to become a happy worm breeder. You can buy the larvae in large pet shops where they sell them as food for reptiles, fish, and birds. You can get them by weight. Gloomy guys behind the counter will ask you: "Is it to feed a terrapin?" And you will reply: "It’s for feeding people" and their mood improves straight away.
“We weren’t well versed in the theory, so we just got Googling. And soon we realized that the temperature regime is important. To talk of a mealworm ‘farm’ is, of course, an exaggeration. In
"What’s more, our worms used to escape. I'll be honest with you: It was horrible. You come home and there are worms crawling all over your bathroom, on all the shelves, and in your cosmetics bag. It’s happened several times. You’ll be looking for
Escape
Nadezhda Serkova"When cooked, mealworms don't have a strong smell or taste. To some
“We started with chickpea and mealworm croquettes (1:3 ratio) because in this form the dish doesn't look so… disgusting. If you don't know the recipe, nothing on your plate will remind you of worms. And then we opened a one-day restaurant and invited everyone to watch us making dishes with mealworms and taste them. We were adding mealworms to pasta and making salads, rolls, and something like falafel with them, except, instead of meat, we were using mealworms. We also put mealworms in sugar candies. People who tasted them said the croquettes with mealworms are much more tender than plain chickpea ones.
Falafel with mealworms
Nadezhda Serkova"Nowadays in
Salad with mealworm
Nadezhda SerkovaIf using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.
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