Would you try cicada ice cream? Or a grasshopper taco?

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Greene, Bill Globe Staff/The Boston Globe

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I was bummed to hear that I'd never get to try the cicada ice cream being served up at Sparky's, a Columbia, Missouri, ice cream shop. It sold out pretty quickly when Sparky's debuted it, last week and then just as quickly vanished on Tuesday when the ice cream store pulled it from the menu.

Turns out, the Sparky's owners didn't feel comfortable keeping the cicadas -- which were collected from employees' backyards -- as an ingredient after local public health officials told them they didn't have enough information regarding safe cooking temperatures for the critters.

So no more de-winged boiled bugs coated in brown sugar and milk chocolate. And, yes, that new bugless version has less protein.

But rest assured, you can still cook with bugs if you'd like. Here are some recipes on naturalist, author, and "bug chef" David George Gordon's website.

And guess what? Bug products are in tons of foods. The "artificial colors" listed on food labels are often produced from cochineal extract and carmine color additives -- extracted from the dried bodies of the female cochineal bug. The US Food and Drug Administration required that they be labeled as such only last January.

If you've got a hankering for some truly gourmet bug fare, try the grasshopper tacos at Tu y Yo Mexican restaurant in Boston. And let me know how they taste.

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