Stories like this give me the heeby-jeeby's!
OAKLAND -- The smell of roasting nuts filled the small kitchen of the Canyon Elementary School, where John Heylin stood watching as a batch of crickets roasted on an aluminum sheet inside a commercial oven. Slowly a nutty aroma began to fill the room in the small schoolhouse in Canyon, the eclectic enclave in incorporated Contra Costa County where the business is based.
The crickets -- 100,000 in all -- had already been frozen and boiled, the latter to sanitize them and improve their taste. Once roasted, Heylin began scooping the brown long-legged insects into a tabletop flour mill.
"That's all it is: 100 percent cricket," Heylin said about the cricket flour, the key ingredient in the power bars that he has based his company, named, appropriately, Chirp.
To the cricket flour, he added flaxseed, oats, honey, sunflower seeds, apple and a little bit of cinnamon and cumin to round out the chewy bars whose texture and taste resembled sesame seeds.
Earlier in the month, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee tried one.
"He said it was good," Heylin said.
OAKLAND -- The smell of roasting nuts filled the small kitchen of the Canyon Elementary School, where John Heylin stood watching as a batch of crickets roasted on an aluminum sheet inside a commercial oven. Slowly a nutty aroma began to fill the room in the small schoolhouse in Canyon, the eclectic enclave in incorporated Contra Costa County where the business is based.
The crickets -- 100,000 in all -- had already been frozen and boiled, the latter to sanitize them and improve their taste. Once roasted, Heylin began scooping the brown long-legged insects into a tabletop flour mill.
"That's all it is: 100 percent cricket," Heylin said about the cricket flour, the key ingredient in the power bars that he has based his company, named, appropriately, Chirp.
To the cricket flour, he added flaxseed, oats, honey, sunflower seeds, apple and a little bit of cinnamon and cumin to round out the chewy bars whose texture and taste resembled sesame seeds.
Earlier in the month, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee tried one.
"He said it was good," Heylin said.
