Bibitte à Sucre
Montréal’s Jardin botanique is a beautiful place to stroll. It has lush greenhouses, winding outdoor paths, and a gourmet cafe, but the admission is pricey if you have to pay the rack rate.
Luckily for us, now that we’re residents we’ve been able to obtain an Accès Montréal card, which offers discounted admission to various city-owned facilities and cultural events, and–yay–free admission for the botanical garden too. There’s a Bixi bike station at the garden’s front gate, so it’s an affordably pleasant jaunt and good exercise to boot.
If you’re like me, museums and city gardens are all very nice and edifying but a wander through the gift shop is a key part of the experience. I like looking at all the themed items; in this case, brightly-colored garden tools, seed packets for indigenous plants, herbal cosmetics, and extremely expensive but environmentally responsible t-shirts.
At most museum gift shops I find myself buying a few birthday cards, maybe a pair of earrings*, and something that smells nice. So when I was cruising the botanical garden gift shop last month for a birthday present for Sylvain, I ran across these: jars of bibitte à sucre.
Bibitte is French for “bug”–mealworms, in this case, with maple sugar, cinnamon, and lovingly frosted with sea salt.
I know you have questions.
Answers:
–Well, they have real maple, so they qualify for the Maple Report.
–No, I did not buy any.
–No, I did not try any.
–No, I am not tempted to eat any, and I wouldn’t give them to Sylvain either, even as a gag.
–No, you will never have to eat them at my house, no matter how drunk we are.
–Yes, they had other bugs with other seasonings.
–No, I don’t remember what they were but I’ll find out if you’re seriously interested. BTW: ick.
–Yes, your vague memory of another blog post about the bugs-for-food industry here in Québec last year is not just your imagination.
Sadly, I am disqualified from ever trying bibitte à sucre because I have a shellfish sensitivity, dammit. Such a shame, they’re low-sodium too.
MAPLE REPORT RATING:
BIBITTE À SUCRE
No.
Just No.
*pre-pandemic. I don’t wear earrings anymore because they get yanked by mask elastics and lost. My earring collection sits collecting dust and rust in my cupboard at home. Maybe someday.
2 replies on “Maple Report #11”
In Mexico, they put a worm in a tequila shot, right? I wonder why the culture of eating a worm didn’t spread in the US
The worm was likely a marketing ploy for mescal, to “prove” the mescal was made with real agave. Some people like to eat the worm as a gross-out stunt. https://www.smartblend.co.uk/blog/what-is-a-tequila-worm-should-you-eat-it-and-why-is-it-there
Eating bugs is normal in a lot of places, and Americans eat a lot of bugs they don’t know about (and don’t want to know about) in their processed food. It’s a cultural thing, but I’m also leaning into my shellfish sensitivity as the reason why I’m not going there. 🙂