Fat-free, Calorie-free Ambrosia!

Fat-free, Calorie-free Ambrosia!

Another chapter in the saga of my never-ending quest for the world's finest delicacies.

I recently took the whole fam to the Hard Rock Cafe at Citywalk, Universal Studios. While browsing in a candy store after dinner I discovered the most marvelous new breakthrough in fat-free snack food: Larvets! These fabulous little freeze-dried Tequila worms come seasoned with BBQ, Mexican spice, or cheddar cheese. The great thing is, you can eat as many of these little beauties as you like and never gain weight. I suppose they'd be great with dips, or even a la mode, but I prefer them right out of the bag. Are they really edible? Absolutely! Just ask my cyberfriend Jim Beale. When he came by my office for a visit, I broke out the Larvets and offered him one. Without batting an eye, he popped it in his mouth whole and began chewing. Matt Reimer caught me using the office scanner to make .gifs of the little worms, and he insisted on trying one as an appetizer before he went to lunch. Doug McMasters heard I had a package at my desk and came over immediately to beg for a worm—downed it on the spot, too. Melinda MacArthur wimped out at first, but when she realized this was an opportunity to be immortalized on one of my Web pages, she came back a few days later and devoured a worm as if it were a gourmet feast. Even Tom Pennington, the most straight-laced person in our office, went for these babies like a buzzard after roadkill. And me? Well, I just can't stop eating them. Jim LoBianco, surfing the Web, read of my affinity for Larvets and wrote, "I'm just wondering what these Larvets grow up to. Some sort of beetle, I suppose. Might be even crunchier." Ah, Jim, you'll be happy to know that the worms themselves provide plenty of crunch—enough to satisfy anyone's need for "tactile feedback." They taste a little like fried pork rind, but without any of the saturated fats. They leave a gritty substance sticking to your teeth, however, so I've found they are best eaten with a Big Gulp® nearby. The down side is that they are quite expensive. (I paid $1.95 for a tiny packet.) But, hey—who knows? If these things catch on like I think they will, the cost will surely plummet as more and more are produced. In fact, I expect to see worm farms start popping up all over the country to produce various gourmet varieties of maggots. Now would be a good time for shrewd investors to get into the market. And watch for them soon on a snack shelf near you.