Gordon, who's a science writer by trade, was sharing recipes and insect cooking secrets at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences recently during its "Bug-a-Palooza weekend.

The presentation's ingredients included scorpians (sauted) crickets (kabobed with fresh veggies) and cricket nymphs (served with cooked orzo pasta), all recipes from his "Eat a Bug Cookbook."

Gordon found his unlike culinary calling by combining his day job and his love of cooking.

"I'm a science writer who's always liked to cook" he said. "It seemed like a good way to do both.

"At first I thought 'Isn't this weird!' But it wasn't that long ago that our ancestors were bugs. In fact, in the Bible, they're kosher!"

Gordon, like many insect experts, stresses that bugs are a sensible food source.

"They're incredibly rich in protein," he said. "Nutritionally, they're a good deal. They taste good too.

A Bug-A-Palooza participant considers a cricket. ©GreenWorks photo by Dan Simon "Here in the United States, we consume about 80 percent of the world's resources, so we're not suffering from a lack of protein, but other countries could make more use of insects as a food source. I suppose you could even bake them, grind them up and create a protein-rich flour out of them, but why miss their flavor?" Surprisingly, it appears bugs don't taste like chicken. "Scorpions taste like crab," Gordon says, "and crickets taste like green peppers." The first of Gordon's two Saturday presentations, drew about 50 people, and at least a few willing volunteers to help him prepare his insect recipes. The average person's mental hang-ups about eating bugs were almost immediately apparent when a young man who thought he was coming up to cook, found he was supposed to sample the cuisine instead. Flight ensued. A Bug-A-Palooza participant reacts to an ingrediant. ©GreenWorks photo by Dan Simon "It's hard to say why people have this reluctance to eat insects," he said. "It might be because they've been such an enemy over the years." Still, the presenter had no shortage of people willing to taste his cooking. Many of those volunteers were children. "I don't know, because it sounded good," said 11-year-old Lucas Cullen, who tried Gordon's cricket kabob. "Everybody always says I'm kind of weird and try this kind of stuff, so I just went up and ate it. "It tasted kind of like turkey, but it was a really, really kind of plain turkey. It didn't really have a flavor, but it kind of tasted like turkey." Gordon says three kinds of people attend his cooking demonstrations. "Some people are taking advantage of the freak show," he said. "Some people will try anything once, and some will drive in from Indiana for it."