"It creeps me out to eat smelly green bugs."

Hi Mrs SomeCowGirl, well the bug didn't actually make it onto the plate or the food on the plate, only into his mouth atop a piece of chicken. I thought they were supposed to some kind of vegetarian bugs. They call them smelly as apparently they smell when they are killed but I never notice, but apparently they taste rather vile when bitten.

Yep, I always hope that I do not attract any kind of bugs to my food.

Thea09, Of course being bit into Yuck! I know that you had said that but didn't think of adding that in my response, sorry about that! I do worry about bugs whilst outside eating!

Your salad sonds great, what time is supper?

Hi GardenGerty, I have no idea what the real name of these annoying little things is. I heard someone English refer to them as leaf bugs and they are supposed to be good in the garden. About the size of a standard fly but with a pale green back which looks a bit like a beetle shell. One bug sounds like twenty outraged flies though. I hope one doesn't disguise itself in your salad later and hope this hasn't put you off your food.

Hi shepherdspy, I agree that the half bug would be much worse, but it's unlikey to happen with a green smelly bug as apparently one can't help but notice biting into them. Must say they do seem to have rather nasty brown innards when squashed. The floor is now littered with corpses which will require sweeping up after another coffee, they are really so stupid that if they do get in in the night they kill themselves by flying into a wall.

I'm not so familiar with the shiny green flies you mention..(and am thankfully not at all familiar with how they'd taste! Yechhh!)there seem to be more of the "bluebottles" herabouts,which just orbit around the lights in a room when they get in..There's a common expression arising from them..if someone's dashing around aimlessly,going nowhere fast,We say they're "Running around like a blue arsed fly"!

WE simplify the running around like a blue arsed fly down to zouzouni, which translates as bug, live wire, pest. Maybe I should introduce the phrase running around like a green smelly bug down at the cafenion.

Hi Aunty, hope it cheered you a bit. He really thought he had a good tale to impart and insisted on me putting it here.. I saw your comment before, I hope you weren't expecting a Greek looking type of person. I leave that one to my son. Now the Greek avatar hasn't taken but the friendly fisherman is on here somewhere and could actually one day be the avatar but I've give up on it and I'm sure you are still looking at a table. The chicken can quite happily go at its current price, if the smelly bugs didn't apparently taste so vile they may well have done as a good protein supply,

Oh no it was just great drama to him aunty, he was playing it up for all he was worth. He announced he was never going on the tv show 'survivor' now he knows what bugs taste like.

I don't think they ever grow out of being picky. My husband is 34 and is so picky that I hate cooking for him. My 13 year old will eat anything except turkey and I tell him that it's chicken

I can't understand why there is not a single 20 year old male on the planet, apart from greek ones of course, who don't enjoy a curry, but totally refuse to try it in their youth. I get tired of the phrase 'I don't like that' when it has never been tasted. 34 and still picky, why doesn't he do the cooking?

Hi Zeph, naturally I was responsibe for something flying onto his chicken and into his mouth It was meant to be a cunning plan of course to live off bugs which are free but I needed an official taster first as he can still be a bit fussy in the food department (when do they grow out of that one), but now bugs taste vile so won't be on the menu.

Hi Stvsile, now if your mother had put more of her vile herbs in the soup you would have been paying more attention and seen the moth before biting into it. I never considered what a moth would taste like but often find moth corpses floating inside the coffee dregs the next morning. Naturally I would have expected you to finish the soup of course as I recall the bean soup being one of your mothers better efforts on the soup front.

Hi Jillhill, you are going to be in major trouble if my son reads this which he probably will after demanding no less that I put it on here. The inclusion of 'poor baby' will incense him, he's at that age. Taking a sting out a tongue sounds like a near on impossible task due to the natural reaction of the tongue to withdraw in protest. I hope I never have to tackle anything like that. I expect your son is wary of bees now and so he should be.

AT least you don't have a problem with him eating veggies and that is a good thing. Yet I can't remember that I have eaten a bug even when I was young. If there was something that I didn't like I didn't eat it. But he could tell you what it taste like. That is good to know that he's not one of those children that don't like veggies as long as they are cooked right.

I hope your salad eating yesterday went well, Thea.. You are right; if it's alive and kicking and not realizing to eat it, yucks!

Ewww... the green, the red. I'm an animal lover, but I still feel yucks when I see worms. I would tend to throw the whole chunk of salads away, because I have this inclination that the worms might have gone to places that I never know, LOL... I thought about you too, Thea... and whether you managed to get that salad thing done after all. Actually, it's been a few months since I've had any salads. I stick to my broccoli, cabbages and whatnot instead.

Hi Zed, I thought of you the other night when preparing salad. This is completely true by the way. I had a new sealed up iceburg lettuce and as I pulled it open to make the salad a live red worm crawled out. It had been in the fridge two days and the lettuce was sealed but the creature was still alive. Sweet chariot has posted a photo lower down here on this page of the exact same green smelly bug my son had the misfortune to eat.

My dear Opal my son was hamming it up for all it was worth, and he insisted I put it on the internet. A green smelly bug is an irritating thing which appears at this time of the year and manages to get indoors. They look docile, a bit like a fly but more stupid, one casual swat and their corpses are everywhere, but they are so noisy, one sounds horrendous. They are supposed to stink bad when killed hence the name and apparently they also don't taste too good.

I think you could be right, life without chicken ? I would have nothing left to eat. I think the stir fry could liven things up alot. You have made me hungry now even if I have to eat bugs

Well feel free to help yourself. My floor is littered with their little corpses which I need to sweep up before the next lot start arriving for the evening. They bang their heads on the smallest of things and they are history, maybe they can't see where they fly, bad luck, hit the mosquito net, time to die.

Hi thezone, we are fast reaching the conclusion that chicken does appear to bring bad luck but what is the altrnative, just brocoli and smelly green bugs alone on the plate, protein and vitamins aplenty you'd agree but not terribly tempting. However the smelly green bugs have only been taste tested raw, and may well improve in a good stir fry.

That green bug was an Alien

Well I wish the whole lot of them would climb back into their spaceship then instead of trying to colonise my house.

Winter is coming here, so all the bugs are dissappearing...until next summer.. when they come north again...lol...Those aliens know how to travel!You may want to check this site out to really identify that bug..lol http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/bugindx.htm

Hi Sunny, higher up on this page someone has kindly posted a picture of the exact green smelly bug we get here, wonder if it's any relation to the ones you get. The flying things are endless here too, outside I use yellow light bulbs which work well to deter moths, but they get through the tiniest spaces inside attracted to the light. I leave the windows open at night but close the wooden shutters, but the bugs come through the air vents. I use a repellant for mosquitoes as allergic to them but the odd one can still smell me out and do its worst, but they are not carrying dangerous diseases here. This year with a longer winter there seemed to be more of everything when they emerged, and also more virilent. The next to come with me the ordinary fly which are very persistent here.

I think they breed too fast Sunny, so have the advantage over us.

bugs are a global problem and we can't seem to get rid of them. i wonder if there will come a day when we can eliminate them...

that is true. i suppose i'd eat one if i had to but..i wouldn't like it.

Hi scarlet_woman, your nephew is extremely sensible to choose to eat bugs, when all the food in the world runs out he will survive very well on all that protein whilst the squeamish will starve.

Hi Shirly, that loathsome retsina could possibly be used as toilet cleaner as its made from pine but that's about the only thing I would do with it. I am yet to see a Greek person partake of the dreadful muck but it appears to be popular amongst tourists who seem to think we drink it and duly load up their suitcases to take it home. Re the green bugs I don't think they are a problen in lower areas but up the hill here they seem to zoom towards the lights and find the tiniest crevice to get through. Actually as this is a Greek house the crvices do tend to be rather large, hence the searing winter draughts. Hugs back.

Hi Hatley, well I'm inclined to agree with what would have been your hubby's take on this one, all that protein just going to waste, and we have so much of the stuff just trying to get in the house. I have considered grasshoppers (seriously) as they used to be regarded as a delicacy in Tudor times, as real meat is so expensive these days. But the taste tester has now declared the smelly green bugs a no go area. Maybe they'd taste better cooked first rather than live.

Hi fruitcakeliz, as we have an abundance of wild herbs going free outside along the lane we regularly make use of this free food supply, and I often suggest doing the same with a few grasshoppers as packed in protein. However it does appear that smelly bugs are really too vile tasting to ever go on the cheap protein supply list. I hope you managed to satisfy your midnight munchies, somehow brocoli would never appeal to me at that hour.