Competition: May 2007 Archives

At the risk of jeopardizing our vegetarian credentials we just had to chronicle a recent cooking demonstration we sat in on last weekend at the annual Bug Fair at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. The weekend insect festival is mostly a hold-the-tarantula affair where little kids still in their gross-out phase, and goth ladies with centipede tattoos, can marvel at nature’s creepiest.

For shock value, this year they hosted a bug cooking demonstration and a cockroach eating contest with the hardly-renowned cookbook author David Lowell Gordon. He’s sort of like the token stupid-insects-trick guest for talk shows. The highlight was definitely not the cooking: the “centipede pasta” was cold Ragu sauce laced with one bug, the “grasshopper kebabs” were barely cooked at all. But seeing four elementary school-aged kids scarfing down 10 whole, oven-baked American cockroaches to win an iPod, now that’s good, clean fun.

You may remember a Hot Knives post from back in February when we competed in one of the most amazing cooking contests there is: the 4th 2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational. Well, our good buddy Drew, who is currently undergoing shock therapy in journalism school to try and kill his sense of humor, finally wrapped up production on his 3-minute documentary on the subject.

Although it’s ostensibly on the event in general, he used our desire to conquer the desert category to cue the proverbial heartstrings, as it were. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll really want a sandwich.

The finish line results are all here. Peep other photos here. And starting training for the 4th 3rd Annual GCI now.