In message , Mary Fisher
writes

I've eaten insects both knowingly and unknowingly but I know a ten year old
girl who cooked and ate (with relish - not the sauce type) a dish of
earthworms. She was one of several military family children who were
learning about survival.

And why not?

We once got a long, bright green caterpillar in with our bright green
Birds Eye frozen peas. The children were about 4 and 5 then - can you
imagine the consternation and then the glee? And the letter I wrote to
Birds Eye about the free protein they were putting in with their peas.
I seem to remember that finding half a caterpillar in school salads was
a fairly frequent occurrence ..........

Of course it's not April 1st, and the little book was written in all
seriousness. My edition is a 1978 reprint of the 1885 original. I
*think* that the original aim of the book can be neatly summed up in the
following excerpt -

"Yet in the country the poorer labourers and their families go on week
after week, attempting to keep body and soul together with nothing but
bread, varied, if possible, by the addition of a taste of bacon, while
hundreds of nutritious and wholesome snails and slugs swarm at night
upon the little cottage garden. Why this wanton and reckless waste of
food? Prejudice, foolish prejudice! Half the poor of England would
actually die of starvation before stretching out their hands to gather
the plentiful molluscus food which their neighbours in France delight
in."

I don't think I need to say anything more ......

--
Susie Thompson
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