Here's the delicious recipe (blanche veggies and grind):

5 - medium sized jalapeños (or serranos)
3-4 Rutgers' sized tomatoes (or 5 big tomatillos)
1 - small onions
garlic (optional, also, not traditional ingredient)
handful of cilantro (raw, or very slightly blanched)
handful of live (Euschistus) stinkbugs

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

PC

Thanks for the recipe' I will make some for MYSELF, but excluding the last item.hehe

I have an strategy: Since they fly away , how can you you make them "stay" so that you can spray them with all that goodie . lol.

Get a small Dust Buster and just bust them before they have a chance to fly away. YMMV

Sey

"Since they fly away , how can you you make them "stay""

thanks Sey... You could put some red hot cinnamon oil in, if you want an idea, but aren't feeling adventurous enough. A food grade dust buster might work :-) If you gather them in a bag and cool them in the fridge, they won't go anywhere, till you are as fast as a mantis with the molcajete. Or just put a few drops of cane alcohol in the bag till they get lethargic but not enough to kill them. I grab them off the tomatoes quickly - hesitate and they are gone. Luckily stinkbugs can't walk quickly, they are slow and play hide and seek if you let them.

Enjoy the salsa! the recipe is authentic w/ or w/o the special ingredient (condiment as the lady in the video corrects him "there are no bugs" when her helper asks about the bugs in the salsa, right then she lets out a friendly chuckle at his thinking). If your peppers are cultured to be hot, be sure to test your preference. Good green salsa es muy picante! In Spanish, picante doesn't mean spicy...It means it bites back lol!

Cheers

PC

PC

Like they say : " If you Can't Beat Them, Eat Them !"

Unfortunately I don't have any Stink Bugs at this time.. Can I substitute another bug ? I know, eg, caterpillars and crickets make a nice deep fry or just sauted in olive oil.

Years ago I had a recipe' for snails. But that doe not mater we don't get snails around here either.

Sey

Sey, we have plenty of stinkbugs in Tn. We're willing to let you take them off our plants...errr, emmm, our hands lol.

PC... While I appreciate the proposed solution, and the new perspective, I am - perhaps right now more than ever - extremely glad that I'm vegetarian.

I pick off at least 10-20 stnkbugs per day (sometimes more,) and still can't keep up. Most are the MBSB, but we also have the Brown, and Southern Green. The Green are easy to distinguish and there aren't many at all. The easiest noticeable difference between the other 2, I've learned, is the color of the belly.

I am not exaggerating to say that nearly every single fruit is marred by their bites. If I didn't just cut around and eat away I'd have to quit growing veggies. They seem to be fairly indiscriminate fruititarians. They have got to my tomatoes, beans, and peppers. Even a couple of the cayennes! They seem to really enjoy the beans and tomatoes. I've seen them on the eggplants, but if they are eating those, there are no real visible signs. I have all the squash covered, but I haven't seen them even near those beds.

I was just thinking... maybe the festival queen could come over and pied piper these buggers out of here!

Do people really eat those awful bugs ? My nightmares are crowded with stink bugs at different stages, the little red ones just out of the eggs which were such a pleasure to kill a hundred ones at a time, the black ones who try and run around the tom, the green and pink bigger ones who let themselves fall of the toms to hide in the mulch, and the big green adults who fly away !

I have a whole equipment of magnifying glasses, surgical gloves, white cardboard to put underneath, glass full of water and dishsoap, and it takes hours every dawn and Sunset to try and murder the beasts.

Not to mention the Brown ones which have spurs on their shoulders and are horrible to grab.

And they even seem to learn and teach one another how to avoid being killed, because now they don't rely only on letting themselves fall on the ground, they also jump to try and avoid the white cardboard underneath !

I wish they were a gourmet favorite here, I'd make a bunch with organic ones !

Marvelous post. Thank you. But do they taste as good with a dusting of Diatomaceous Earth? I have a lot of dead ones in that condition. If you can't eat them, beat them.

LOL! Here's some Nutrition facts I put on a label for 3.5 ounces (100 g)

South African Thongolifha
(Dried Stink Bugs, Encosternum delegorguei)

from Teffo, et. al. (2007)


(dried) nuts (pecans)

from USDA (2008)

About that Diatomaceous Earth seasoning Dan, there is no need for concern for humans. DE is a nutritional supplement for humans, as well as a supplement in livestock feed. It is claimed to be a great "colon cleaner" and in food grade is consumed by some health conscious as a nutritional supplement, and consumed by everyone who eats grains as it is mixed in silos and other places grain is stored.

Francoise, I'm glad you liked the post :-) Are you in the South of France. If so, I was reading about the Spiked Stink Bug (Picromerus bidens) which has thorny pronotum epaulettes, is that the big nasty one? It is an interesting case! Predatory when caterpillars and other insect pests are attacking your tomatoes, but when it can't find other bugs to eat, then it goes for the tomatoes :-( Better that bug than the other ones until they get too hungry, I used to be squeamish about smashing the stink bugs but now I just grab a few quickly with my fingers and quickly crush them. Here's the problem you have observed, and you are right about the "learning" in the sense they communicate. Stink Bugs (Shield Bugs in general), contain alarm pheromones in their ejected fluid, which can be up to 10% their whole body weight. Once the pheromone is in the air, others become alarmed and go into hide-and-seek and flight mode. When grabbing them I work from bottom up and that is somewhat helpful. If doing the chore of removal, I quickly grab with one hand's fingers and kill on a flat stone with my foot *downwind* before they squirt.

rgreen, believe me when I say I am sympathetic to your situation. It sounds very much like mine. Luckily the Maromated Brown ones aren't here this season as they have been before, there is something about them that I find more disgusting than the other ones. Maybe it is because their legs have bigger flairs on them. I follow the vegetarian thinking, but am not a vegetarian myself, I just can't give up the convenience as a protein source, nor the smell of steak and ribs, though I am a minimalist when it comes to animal food in the last few years. My food expenses have really dropped and my health has improved. But I think eating stink bugs shouldn't have such a taboo or gross-factor. Stink Bugs here are pure fed on tomatoes. They make me ripping mad when I harvest and have to eat their spittle in every single tomato they've damaged, but are a much safer (re: human pathogens) than larger animal meats. Then I think about how many vegetarians like honey, which is a regurgitated product (multiple times) by bees as they add their saliva and use their honey stomachs to completely break down the starches they collect into simple sugars. I'm not sure what makes that any more appetizing than another bug that eats pure tomatoes. I need to be a little more adventurous though and actually do what I'm thinking sometime. If we knew how many insect parts we were eating on a regular basis, I think many people would loose their inhibitions. In the future I see stink bug farming. Of those that eat molluscs , I just keep thinking ... some French guys must have be the first to say Escargot, Voila!, and oysters ... who was the first one to stick one of those in the mouths :-) :-)

Cheers

PC